Credit card fraud is part of the admission price when you earn loyalty points with your expenses. The more cards you have, the more frequently you’ll have one of your cards compromised.
Resolving a fraudulent charge can be as easy as a text to your bank or it might take hours on the phone to prove you didn’t buy tickets to a music festival in Miami (true story).
Fortunately, banks have gotten better at catching questionable charges and rejecting them until you confirm if it was you purchasing online software from a foreign company (it was).
However, having your card canceled for fraud can ruin your plans if you’re planning a significant expense.
That’s what’s happening with me and my Bilt Mastercard and Wells Fargo.
As a reminder, Bilt Mastercard runs a rent day promotion on the first of every month. One of the benefits is that you earn double points in each category.
- 6x on dining
- 4x on travel
- 2x on other purchases (excluding rent)
I’ve used this promotion to earn many points by waiting to pay for purchases, like a new sofa, on the 1st of the month.
I had a few things I was going to buy this month. That was, until someone tried to run a purchase on my Bilt Mastercard from Belgium. I received a text message, email and phone call from Wells Fargo to confirm the charge.
I called the number on the back of my card and told them these charges weren’t mine. The representative read me the “fraud script” and said they would close that account number and issue me a new card.
I received a message from Wells Fargo that said I should receive my new card in 7 days.
This month’s rent day will be a bust since I won’t have my new card in time. The only bright side is that the rep updated my Apple Pay account so I can use my Bilt Mastercard for contactless payments.
I can hold off on a few purchases until next month so it’s not a total loss, more of a case of awful timing. Can’t scammers have a little consideration when they try to use a stolen card so we can get a replacement in time for a promotion?!
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1 comment
The same thing happened to me when I first got the Bilt card. I was planning to buy all of this expensive office equipment and computers but I had fraud on the card and I had to wait for a new card. Somehow scammers are just trying tons of different combinations as I never used my card anywhere so it’s scary that scammers are able to hack and get a large # of cards by different combinations. That’s happened a few times now with different cards that I just keep in a drawer and never used the actual card.