Credit Card Fraud

You always hear about credit card frauds happening all over the world but never imagine that one day you might also become a victim. You will have one person in your group who will advice you against using the card online or using a credit card altogether due to such frauds. You would have brushed such fears as unwarranted and gone on using the card happily. I am one of those, who have always brushed away the thought of becoming a prey to credit card fraud, until today.

I am a proud contributor to the statistics about people whose credit card has been used fraudulently. Mine was online purchase of tickets for Delhi and god knows which other destinations. The perpetrator/s used the card to purchase flight tickets on two different airlines. In the second purchase they ( I am using plural as I believe there has to be more than one) cancelled the ticket immediately to get a credit note from the airline which can then be used at a later stage to book tickets.

Angry, irritated and indignant that something like this can still happen to you in this day and age of hi-tech security, enough fraud checks in place and more importantly the trust you place in your vendors to keep the sanctity of the credit card information. Extremely impressed with the ICICI credit card fraud detection department for promptly following up with me to confirm if I made the purchases or not and then taking appropriate action. This timely step will save the bank and yours truly a bundle as all the tickets have been cancelled and the credit note blocked.

Extremely pissed at the airlines that in-spite of repeated complaints, a case filed against them and won and many protests they continue to give a credit note to the customer in lieu of ticket cancellation than refund the money back to the customer. To avoid such frauds they have to start paying back the refund money to the customer. If this refund system was in place don't think anyone would have used the card online to buy flight tickets and then cancelled to get the credit note which can then be sold to some spurious travel agent who can use the note to make tickets for someone else. The criminals don't gain anything if they cancel the ticket as the money goes back to the cardholder. Not saying that this solution will put an end to frauds but will at-least result in one additional control in place to prevent frauds.
My entire family believes in 'cash is king' and I was the exception. I can see all of them now with the "listen to your family, told you so" expression.