Is It Fraud or Just F**k the Consumer

So, I get a voice mail from my mail order pharmacy telling me there's a problem with my credit card (Chase). This has happened a number of times before when their fraud unit decided the amount or nature of the purchase being requested was "out of the ordinary" and they insisted they had to talk to me before they would let it process. This has been a pain in the you-know- where each time and I've done everything I could do to give them comfort that these purchases are all mine.

In this case, I gave this credit card information to my mail order pharmacy at the beginning of the year (when I was stupid enough to enroll in the HSA Plan). They send my prescriptions every 90 days or so, which means they have used this same card each time. Well, sure enough last Friday I got another one of these calls on a prescription that I'm now out of (requested it a week ago) and this delayed it even more.

So this morning I got up an hour early to try to go into work early but ended up on the phone between the pharmacy and the credit card company during the entire stinking "extra" hour.

I ended up just giving the pharmacy another credit card number. When I called the customer service number on the back of the credit card it immediately routed to their Fraud unit and I was immediately suspicious. The lady who finally answered informed me that someone had told them that my card had been compromised so the account had to immediately be closed and any charges that came in on it were denied. Hence the pharmacy's experience and apparently there was another charge where the same thing happened but I haven't figured out yet what charge that was.

My boiling point had now been reached when I said, "So when were you going to tell me about this?" She fumbled around for a minute then said, "Oh there is a letter in the mail." I said, "And in the meantime, I look like I don't pay my bills as I blissfully use a card that YOU have closed without notifying me." I said, "So who reported this fraud because it wasn't me?" Of course, she couldn't tell me that, only that it might have been any one of a number of people or groups.

Then she says, "New cards for a new account will be issued to you." I said, "No, they won't." "I now have to figure out all the vendors I need to notify that this account number is closed and I guarantee once I've done that, I will not be using it again." Then she says, "Oh, we don't want you to close your account over this." I said, "Too bad, I just went through a similar nightmare with this a year ago when my bank closed my checking account (one of 500,000 accounts who experienced the same thing) without any notice to me and I had charges bouncing all over the place." (In that case it was 2 1/2 weeks before I even got "the letter".) "I WILL NOT GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN!"

Can I just say, "I HATE BANKS!"