Who Pays for Goods that Were Purchased with Stolen Credit Cards?

Today hundreds of people use credit cards every day. Unfortunately, sometimes our credit information can be stolen. Today most credit card offers come up with a zero liability policy that means if your credit card is stolen you are not liable for unauthorized purchases or you are only liable for a very small portion. Even if a thief pays for good worth thousands of dollars with your plastic card, zero liability policy means that you will not pay a dime!

On the other hand, the retailer who accepted a stolen credit card without knowing it, loses the price of goods purchased with this plastic, as well as time and attempt to recover their costs. There is one important question: who pays for all financial damages?

The answer to this question is very easy: regular consumers like you and me pay for these damages! The storeowners raise their prices and credit card issuers like Visa, American Express or MasterCard raise their interest rate and fees in order to compensate for plastic card theft.

So as you can see, while the owners of the stolen credit cards don't spend a penny for unauthorized purchases, the rest of the consumers are paying huge fees in order to compensate for the stolen cards!

But is there anything that can be done about it?

First of all, retailers need to spend some money in order to protect themselves and their stores from shoplifters. The retailers have to develop strategies to stop fraud, scam and theft! Every year retailers loose $37 billion from shop lifting, theft from employees, fraud and administrative mistakes.

Some people even insist on creating a data base in order to keep track on theft nationwide! You can have the best credit card, but still you can be a victim of fraud and identity theft as they can affect everyone, not only the consumers, but credit card companies and retailers as well!

The statistics shows that only one out of nine cases of fraud is reported to the consumers' protection office. Today scam and fraud are very common. Every day more and more people become the victims of these invisible enemies.

Only in case credit card companies, banks, retailers and consumers gather together in order to fight scammers, the "enemy" will be conquered! As you can see, everyone can be a victim of credit card theft even if your card was not stolen!

So every time you fill in the credit card application for the credit card you have chosen, think about the cases of fraud and credit card theft right away! Read the security policy of your card attentively. Know that you can protect yourself from scammers as knowledge is the key to your financial security!

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