Warbird Information Exchange

Sorry off topic here but just need to vent.

I got a phone call this morning from the bank I deal with. They told me that someone got my check card information and bought over $500 worth of stuff!

At the moment I got most of it taken care of it. But as of now I am broke and gotta wait till Tuesday to clear up the rest of the ordeal. But I ow car inc. in a couple days. Now not sure I will have time to pay the bill!

Mustangdriver...and now me have had the misfortune of being victimized by criminals. Hopefully whoever stole my account will be caught as they bought stuff online...hmmmm smart move. Now all is need is find out where the items is being shipped too. I may have these suckers nailed by next week.

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Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

Sorry to hear about your ordeal. I had a similar experience about ten years ago with a credit card. Some guy in Inglewood CA bought about $130 in pizzas, and bought his girlfriend about $150 in roses for Valentine's day. Can you imagine the sort of mind that would use a stolen credit id to buy someone flowers for Valentines???

Sorry to hear about your misfortune Nathan... I do hope that you get things straightened out in time. I assume you have called your creditors to let them know about the situation. I truly hate the trolls who do this sort of thing... it can really throw your life out of whack. Hope they nail the bugger!

All the best,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

I've had both credit card numbers stolen within two weeks of each other this month. It's from online transactions, so now if I can I'm calling these places when I order. I suspect my computer at work is not as secure as it should be, because all the purchases were done on my work computer. One of these I was informed the company's entire database was stolen so it may not matter what computer I purchased on. I'm starting to think this is Planet Thief.

John

Some credit card companies now let you set up a "virtual" credit card with a small limit or as a single-use temporary number to use as a safeguard for online transactions. It's certainly something that I will try to use in the future.

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"They done it, they done it, damned if they ain't flew." December 17, 1903

Maybe your XGF stole it

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A man's got to know his limitations.

I mistakenly left my card at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. They hit me for over 650.00. Fortunately Wells Fargo backed everything up. Apparently someone at the restaurant kept it and converted some of their cash tickets with my card.

Sorry to hear that man. I know what that feels like. Sending a PM.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

I was a victim of identity theft back in 1998, before anyone had ever really coined the term. Suckers rang up nearly $10,000 on my name, from a house lease in a state I'd never lived in, to a gigantic phone bill from that same location, and a big Home Depot charge account.

I never knew if they were caught or not, and it is an incident that still affects my credit to this day.

It's a total nightmare, so I sympathize.

Well, we know what part of his body he was thinking with..and it wasn't his brain or his conscience...hopefully she didn't put out for him!


Sorry to hear about your situation, Nathan. Hopefully you caught it before it got too far out of hand. Call the car insurance company and explain the situation..they may cut you some slack. I assume the card in question has been cancelled and they've issued you a new one?

My mom nearly got taken by ID thieves a couple of months ago..she got a very legit sounding phone call claiming to be from AT&T, saying she owed money. She paid with a credit card over the phone. After hanging up, she got suspicious and called her bank, and sure enough someone halfway across the country had tried to rack up several thousand dollars worth of online purchases within a half-hour. Fortunately her bank was equally suspicious and declined them all.

SN

Happened to me a couple of years ago. I had booked a B&B in Cambridge for Flying Legends. They asked me for the "security" number on the back. 3 days later, something approaching $1500 showed up from an online poker site in Las Vegas
CC company stopped payment so I didn't lose anything except my temper. I asked them if they could trace the charges back to whoever made them and was told, "No, as long as we get our money back from the bank in UK, We don't care. It's up to them to trace it back if they desire."
Geez, what an attitude! It had to be an employee of the B&B and they only have 4.
Happened again with Mrs. Mudge's debit last year. Guy bought about $600 worth of computer geek stuff. Cleared that up OK, too.
Don't ya' just want to get your hands on 'em for 5 minutes?

Mudge the vindictive

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Land of the free because of the brave

This is not directed at Nate, I met him at Genesso and he seems like a nice guy, obviously this should not happen to anyone.

If you have to deal with your homeowner's insurance on something small, read on ...........

HOWEVER, everyone needs to keep in mind that a CHECK CARD is significantly different than a credit card.

With a check card, when it gets swiped during a purchase, the money is transfered out in a few minutes at most. It is basically a plastic check or cash. There is generally no recourse against the Check card company (your bank) and if you are not insured (and a lot of people are not), you are simply out of luck.

Credit cards as we know will charge back things. I have used a credit card on PAYPAL and when I didn't get what I ordered I have asked the CC company to charge it back (against PAYPAL's written policy). Charges were reversed. I got my money back and PAYPAL never said a word.

As FAR AS GOING TO your homeowner's insurance for recovery for minor items (cameras stolen, check or credit card fraud, etc. Items that cost a few grand even). Keep in mind that the real reason that you have homeowner's insurance is that you need to protect your home against fires (ask Jack Cook about it), natural disasters (hurricanes don't really count since aparently most of that needs covered by flood insurance). If you have a mortage on your home or a line of credit your insurer REQUIRES you to have insurance. Your FRIENDLY insurance company keeps score of the number of claims you make (even if they are small) and will raise your rates or quite possibly CANCEL YOUR policy (some states have laws to make it harder to cancel you if you have been with the same company for a number of years; in WV it is 2 years)

So honestly if you can handle the loss out of your pocket, pay it. They are going to get it back from you..............

With me, in 8/05 when I got back from OSH, I found the icemaker line to the refergerator in the finished basement living room to be leaking for what I thought was a day or two. A small area of carpet got wet and I tried to clean it up with a shop VAC, 2 days later, no luck. I called the insurance company, they sent out SERVICEMASTER, and eventually wrote me a check for about $2500 (based on THEIR estimate of the damage, not mine). I got the damage repaired for about $4000 (I kicked in the rest).

Policy comes up for renewal, 18 years same company, no claims. To me replacement value for the house structure (not contents) is about an actual $300,000 (and I thought that was high). To get my rates up over the years, they kept increasing the value of my house (their idea) to about $500,000 before the leak. I thought it was a ripoff, but then I live in an area where its hard to get insurance. Tehy sent someone voer to look at my house. Renewal comes up after the leak and SUDDENLY my house is worth $1,000,000 and I didn't get their lowest rate because of my bad credit. Honestly I the last time I borrowed anything was to buy a pickup truck in 1988 and paid the 24 month loan off in 3 months. I paid off the 30 year mortgage on the house in 8 years. I only have current credit card debt, which is what I spent last month.

So I called them and spoke to the underwriter and I'll give him credit for being honest, he said it wasn't my credit, but he told me that they needed to recover for the "recent loss". I asked him when my rate would go back down and he said it would be 5 to 8 years (adjusted for inflation, etc).

For the record, my rate went from $1800 a year to $5200 a year, an increase of $3400 a year and if it comes down in 5 years, my $2500 claim will only cost me $17,000.

So watch out when you call the homeowner's insurance about a claim.

In WV we have "valued policies" which means if the house is destroyed, the ins company has to pay the insured value, which in my case is a $1mil (and contents), no matter what the house is worth.

So if it catches on fire, I'm doing what I'd do if the engine seizes in a fully insured P-51, I bail out and then the insurance company owns it. I'll grab the baby pictures instead of the fireextingusher and call the fire department from the neighbor's house..........

Wonder why people hate insurance companies??????????

Mark H

Go to the Federal Trade Commission website for Identity Theft http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft//

They have some very good information on what you need to do. Start with these four steps, the above FTC website has the specifics of how to do all this...

1. Place a fraud alert on your credit reports, and review your credit reports.

2. Close the accounts that you know, or believe, have been tampered with or opened fraudulently.

3. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

4. File a report with your local police or the police in the community where the identity theft took place.


Start a file and KEEP COPIES OF EVERYTHING relating to this incident!

Window was smashed out of my truck a few months ago. Scumsuckers produced fake DL and counterfeit checks with info from my wife's purse. Make sure your bank contacts all three of the major check clearing companies and puts a stop on the compromised account. Took a month till the fake checks stopped showing up, were still being accepted by national businesses... - and I was in contact with my banker within 10 min of the loss of the origianl checkbook!

Don't even want to get started on the insurance company...

I thought that gator who ate the lowlife breaking into cars at the casino in Florida deserved a medal instead of being put down...

Sounds like p51Mstg has been-there-done-that too, we must have matching t-shirts...

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Yesterday is experience, tomorrow is hope, today is getting from one to the other.

This just happened to me this morning, 2 purchases totaling over $600 that i never made, my bank is great, they were on it fast, 1 charge has been removed already