Ways to Protect Yourself from Credit Card Charge Fraud

Whether the fraud is perpetuated on the part of some thieving criminal who steals your identity and has a hey-day with your card, or the credit card company in charging you fees and interest based on the changing whims, it is a frustrating game to play.

You must protect yourself and your money.  So here are some tips to helping you scrutinize what is on your statement in an effort to remain in control of your credit cards.

Save Receipts.  Put all of your credit card receipts in one place and then match them up with the statement that you get every month.  If you get your statement via email or as a downloadable from the card company website, then print it out on a printer and match up the receipts in that fashion.  Make sure that the total of each purchase matches.  Then, file your receipts away for future reference.  It never hurts to have them to be able to go back and look at a particular transaction especially if you have an extended warranty plan on product purchases.

Another area where this is important is if you use your card to eat out at restaurants.  Some unscrupulous clerks and servers have been known to boost up the tip amount on your card after you leave the establishment.  This would be something to dispute with the restaurant and then demand that a credit be processed.  But, be sure to do it soon after the occurrence.

Watch for credits.  If you returned an item, you should have obtained a receipt for that return.  Make sure it gets credited back to your card and account. The original purchase and the credit might happen between two statements so be sure to flag and save your credits so that you can match them up for accuracy.

Pay cash advances quickly.  Cash advances carry their own charges and rates.  If you take a cash advance, make sure that if you apply a payment to the card to pay it off, it gets applied correctly.  If it does not, then call the card issuer and find out why it did not and what you can do to get it changed.

Monitor the finance charges.  Multiple kinds of finance charges appear on your card because there are different balances and those balances have their own interest rates and fees.  Be sure to watch these charges so that they are being applied correctly to the proper balance.  Generally, a credit card company wants to keep the balance with the highest finance charge untouched so that they can earn more interest.

Due date for payments.  Make sure that you know when your payments are due on the account for you to avoid additional charges.  Making payments on the Internet is preferable because you avoid having to wait until a check arrives and is credited to your account.  Paying via Internet is an almost instantaneous method and can help you avoid costly late fees.

How did that get there?  Credit insurance is the one stealth charge that can appear on your credit card statement.  If you find it there, call and have it cancelled.  Many times if you do not take action to prevent it from being applied it automatically kicks in.

There are many ways that an ‘oops’ can happen, so be very aware at all times of your credit card activity by logging on via the Internet to see the changes that occur in a timely way.  In this way, you can help protect yourself from credit card fraud of all kinds.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Card Security, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.