PSA: My bank called me about a $3.50 charge that saved me $400

I got a fraud alert last Thursday for a tiny gas station purchase in Tulsa, Oklahoma while I was sitting at home in Chicago. The rep asked if I'd been there and when I said no, they found nine other pending charges from the same trip. Has anyone else had their bank catch something that small that led to bigger stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

dakotab9322d ago

Get that question out of your head right now. Banks have whole departments dedicated to catching fraud at every dollar amount. Stopping a $3.50 charge doesn't take resources away from stopping a $400 one. If anything, it proves the system is working the way it should. These small test charges are the most important alerts because they let you shut everything down before real damage happens. You want a bank that catches everything, not one that picks and chooses based on size.

ninaowens22d ago

Aren't you worried that stopping small charges makes the bank less careful about the big ones?

the_lee22d ago

And that's exactly why the small ones matter. Banks use those tiny test charges to see if criminals are checking if the card works before they go big. Catching a $3.50 slip means they stopped the whole operation before it really got started.