We all know that fraud is extremely common nowadays. Very often our credit card offers can be used against us. It is not a secret that scammers steal credit card information or credit cards themselves and purchase everything they need with plastics that do not belong to them. Credit card companies become more and more concerned about this important problem and try to do their best to protect their customers from fraud. Some credit card users think that they are doing way too much, becoming worse shopping partner than their conscience.

Personally, I didn't have any problems with my American Express credit card, but about a week ago my friend Laura told me an interesting story that happened to her recently.

Laura is one of those women who love shopping! She often uses her credit cards to pay for her purchases as she finds them to be very convenient.

Two months ago she went to the mall and saw a huge shoe sale. She immediately bought 13 pairs of shoes as all women love shoes! She paid for her purchases with her favorite MasterCard credit card. When she got home, she had a message on her answering machine from MasterCard asking to call them back. But Laura didn't do it. In the evening she got a call from MasterCard again, they wanted to know if it was her spending the money from the card on those shoes.

But that was not the end of the story: two weeks later she got a letter from her credit card company, asking to give them a call again. She knew it was not fraud and called them. She was asked the same question all over again! Laura had no clue why her credit card company thought that it was someone else using her plastic.

About 2 weeks later Laura and her husband went to the store to buy a flat screen TV and a washing machine and paid with her Visa credit card this time. The credit limit on her card was higher than the price of TV, but for some reason Visa didn't even question her purchase, they simply blocked the card! The cashier smiled and said that once her card was blocked simply because she used it twice at the same gas station! Now here is where the security seems to be a little absurd.

Surprisingly, their charge went through 10 minutes later without any problems! But the next day Laura got a call from Visa credit card company asking if it was really her spending that money!

My other friend Paul also had an unpleasant situation when he went to visit his wife in Russia. They were having a peaceful evening in the restaurant. Paul wanted to pay for the meal with his credit card, but the waiter was really confused and said that his card was blocked. He was lucky to have some rubles with him, so he paid for the meal. Paul was really shocked and called his credit card company, he was told that he had to inform them about him going abroad. Two days later his card was unblocked.

Some people think that credit card companies do too much and their security system becomes pretty annoying, but on the other hand, think twice about it! It is good that credit card companies do whatever they can to protect their customers! It is worth answering several phone calls in order to be financially protected, isn't it?

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