Unwanted Surprise

Tuesday April 16th 2013

Well this morning after a bit of detective work on our behalf we found that we had received an unwanted surprise. When we checked into the hotel yesterday we handed over our credit card as per usual hotel procedures to cover any incidentals and the staff member told us it would not authorise. We thought that was odd as we had just paid for the hotel in New York with the card but instead handed over a cash deposit. We logged on to our internet banking and thought the credit card didn't quite look right but knew we would have to wait another day or two to see what happened when the New York hotel and Virgin America Baggage charges showed up.

We logged on again this morning and surprise, we found that we have been victims of credit card fraud.  AGAIN!!! David immediately called the bank and they advised that they had picked it up and put a block on our card. Hence, the reason it would not authorise yesterday.

From what we can see so far there is $5000 from a Hong Kong based company and according to the bank there is another transaction that we can't see yet from Taiwan. This is incredibly frustrating as we have hardly used our credit card at all on this trip and yet this is the result. We are struggling to work out how this could have happened as we can only think of one transaction, a New York restaurant,  where the card was physically out of our sight. Luckily we have a little money left to tide us over for the next few days. When we get home we will then need to go straight into the bank and try to resolve the issue. Not the way we had wanted to finish our holiday.