Thursday, February 28, 2013

Credit Cards

Well, it's happened again.

Two years ago, just before Christmas while we were in St Lucia, we got an email from our Credit Union stating

"Visa Fraud Control has notified us that your XXXX YYYY Credit Union credit card may have been compromised in a security breach at a 3rd party company" 

Yesterday morning just before we left the Saintes for Dominica we got the message again.  So as soon as we were anchored in Dominica I started trying to resolve the issue.   I tried calling the Credit Union but my connection to the internet was not good.  I replaced our omni antenna with a directional antenna cranked up the power on the Bullet and tried again.

I was able to get through and in a lengthy conversation with the CS rep found out that only 2 of our 3 cards from this institution were affected!  The Credit Union was very sympathetic and understanding stating that replacement cards had already been mailed (our mail goes to a UPS Store in Punta Gorda).  So rather than try to have replacement cards sent to us in the Caribbean we are hoping to get through the rest of the season on  one VISA and one Mastercard.  

Up until now I thought that 4 credit cards would be fine for our time out here - guess I need to go with 6 next year!  Wish IP Sponsored a credit card!

In the meantime I hit the local ATM's for some cash.

2 comments:

  1. That has to be the worst.. At least you have the techno savy to be able to communicate with them from the boat. It at least helps some with the problem.

    We had a similar problem about a week or so ago - but in our case was just suspicious transactions (was just kate shopping so go figure - nothing suspicious about that)

    A quick call and our card was back on.

    I guess the moral is to have the cards with different banks.

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  2. WOW! We were just talking about that. I wonder who the bad guys are?

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