This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Trip Booking Tips
Apr
12
2016
Another thing I do is not trust telling someone my credit card information over the phone. Booking websites, yes. Most of those are automated and there’s no chance for a rogue employee at the establishment to walk away with my information. Losing information to hackers is a possibility, but that’s at another level. I can’t do anything about that.
My credit card was compromised a couple years ago. The CC company caught on and did not fulfill the fraudulent purchase, but I still had the hassle of cancelling that card and getting a new one. No, that wasn’t the hassle. The hassle was remembering all the places that used that card for recurring transactions and updating them with the new card info. The monthly transactions weren’t that bad – just a glance at the previous statement told me those. But there were some annual transactions that were trickier to find. And one I didn’t find until the company notified me that they were denied.
I have a pretty good idea of what happened to get into that mess. It happened shortly after I called a place to book a reservation. It was a smaller operation, one that did not handle reservations online. And it was a seasonal operation, meaning that a lot of the staff were college age, or maybe even high schoolers. My guess is that I happened to get one of the untrustworthy ones. He probably entered my information into their booking system and also wrote it down for himself to use later. Maybe he tried to use it himself. Maybe he was just a runner who got paid to gather information for someone else. Doesn’t really matter.
What does matter is that I now use a Virtual Account Number if I have to give a credit card number over the phone. Not every CC company has them (mine does but my wife’s does not. Yes, we have separate cards. For risk mitigation purposes).
When I see that a place says “Call for reservations” I go to my CC website and generate a VAN with a limit slightly over the expected cost and an expiration date just after the expected time. I tell the VAN to the suspect place, so if my CC is compromised, I can tell the CC company those are not real purchases and I don’t have to do any more damage control or scramble with giving a new CC# to companies that I do want to have it on file.
He who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets, Therefore do not associate with a gossip.
Proverbs 20:19
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:44 am and has been carefully placed in the Finance category.
April 12th, 2016 at 10:25 am
My wife’s card got compromised this morning. Then I read this. You are now the prime suspect.
April 12th, 2016 at 10:04 pm
See, you should have taken my advice.