I recently discovered two mysterious charges on my latest Master Card bill: $19,95 for a credit report, and, three weeks later, $12.95 for a monthly subscription fee. Both these charges were from a certain "CIC Triple Advantage" organization in Irvine, CA whose address is only a post office box. A post office box as an official mailing address suggests, in my experience, an organization trying to avoid public scrutiny.
Having no relationship with "CIC Triple Advantage, " having no idea what they are about, and the charges being made on a credit card with which I use exclusively to make travel reservations, and with which I never purchase anything; I called the number on the bill (877-481-6825) to have the charges reversed; someone had clearly made a mistake, or perhaps my Master Card account number had been compromised in some way. I was met on the phone with a long advertisement for "credit reports" and some kind of vague "credit monitoring service" before I was finally connected to an "agent." While listening to the advertisements, I wondered what would posses someone to buy credit reports ($19.95) when anyone can get them for free, once a year, from the credit reporting agencies themselves. I was completely mystified as to what value a "credit monitoring service" ($12.95 a month) could be to anyone which normal vigilance could offer for free. But a little reflection reminded me that the TV and the radio are filled with advertisements for utterly useless products of all kinds. That the nonsense is advertised incessantly with long, lavish, and obnoxious messages means there are a sufficient number of suckers buying the stuff to justify the advertising budgets.
In due course the "agent" answered by inviting my to tell her how she could help me. I explained that there had been some kind of mistake and that two charges were made to my Master Card account in error, and could she please credit my account with the amounts. Then the fun began.
1. The agent asked me for some personal information with which my identity could be verified. Now, I don't even give my name to people on the phone I don't know and with whom I have no business relationship at all. I reminded the agent why I was calling, that I had never ordered anything, and that any personal information I supplied would be new information to her and her organization, and of new value in verifying anything.
2. Curiosity drove me to ask the agent what name was currently on the account for which I had supplied my 16-digit Master Card account number. (Please note that the instant I recited my 16-digit account number, my Master Card account had been compromised, and that I would have to close the account the instant I got off the phone.)
3. The agent gave me the name on the account as someone I had never heard of before, and clearly not me. Well, perhaps somebody inverted a digit and, by chance, my account number became affixed to CIC's mystery customer, someone else.
4.incredibly, the agent insisted on my name (even though she had one - not mne), the city of my birth, my birth date, and my mother's maiden name.
5. To hasten the increasingly pointless exercise, which was clearly demonstrating that "CIC Triple Advantage" was, at best, a hopelessly sloppy operation; I furnished random responses for her queries, including a birthday of 31 February in and a name that had me as a well-known and infamous figure from medieval history. Since I had no relationship with the outfit on the phone and had never ordered anything from anyone with the Master Card account in question, I didn't matter what data I supplied; I was a complete and total stranger to "CIC Triple Advantage."
6. I was put on hold for about two minutes while my "data was being verified." I could hardly wait to hear her response to the nonsense I gave her.
7.in due course she came back on the line to announce that my data had "checked good, " and that she was prepared to help me! I was stunned. Now I knew the organization on the phone with me was not merely sloppy or inept in its employees, but probably engaged in some kind of fraudulent activity as a normal course of business. That an enterprise portraying itself as some kind of credit watch-dog would "verify" a 13th century medieval terrorist born on 31 February with a mother whose maiden name was "Barbara Bush" as a "valid account holder" was beyond ridiculous.
8. I briefly and calmly repeated my humble request for a reversal of the two mistaken and unauthorized charges. I enhanced my request by assuring the agent that neither do I buy anything with the account in question (I only use it to make travel reservations - not payments), nor would it even occur to me to buy a credit report from anyone, and I certainly wouldn't follow up with a monthly $12.95 subscription for some kind of vague service with no apparent value. I can get the exact equivalent for free.
9. The agent gave me a post office box to which I could send a written request for the two reversals, and that I had to be very careful to include the Master Card account number in my correspondence as well as my name, address, phone number and my SSAN.
10. I was certainly not going to send mail with so much as my name to stranger. So, upon calmly threatening to go to the media with the issue (which I was fully prepared to do), she eventually promised to refund both charges to my account, and that there would be no further "subscription charges." I, of course, didn't believe a word.
I disputed both charges with my bank and then closed the Master Card account immediately after getting of the phone with what I was sure is an organization engaged in fraud: stealing personal information, making below-the-radar credit charges, etc. Sadly, closing the account will have no effect on any continuing charges for the subscription service, but each time I see another unauthorized charge from this organization, which I later learned makes its own contributions to the late night advertisements for worthless products on the TV as something called "Free Credit Report, " I'll dispute them. Each dispute will cost this outfit $50. Hopefully, the costs of the disputes will encourage CIC to stop making the charges to my closed account.
Malcolm
Plano, Texas
U.S.A.
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