The overwhelming majority of folks don’t think anything of it when they hand over their debit card to buy an item, but not those that have been burned by debit cards, debit cards that can be used like credit cards. Last summer, a native of San Jose, California utilized his debit card to book a rental car that he aimed to drive from Memphis Tennessee to Saint Louis while he took a vacation.
Supposedly, the car would have cost him about two hundred and forty dollars. When he went to purchase an item in Memphis, he discovered that his bank account had been put on freeze. What had happened was that the rental car agency had put a five hundred dollar hold on his account, an amount that was high enough to trigger a fraud alert at his bank. The man got his account reactivated immediately, but the five hundred dollar hold remained. Not even until he turned in the car, but for two days afterward.
This man might have gotten off a lot easier than others. Three years ago, an identity thief got a hold of a woman’s debit card number and made six hundred dollars worth of fraudulent purchases. Going back and forth between her bank and the merchants took up a lot of time and caused a lot of pain.
She eventually got some of the charges taken back, but wasn’t able to recover almost one hundred and sixty dollars worth of the charges. The victim thinks that because her loss was so minuscule relatively, it really did not get much attention from the police. Unluckily, what is not a big deal for law enforcement obviously has a big impact on a person that is struggling to pay their bills.
Another Michigan denizen experienced a similar situation a few years ago. Article will be continued in parts two and three.
Rapid Recovery Solution is a medical debt collection company.