A recent conversation.

‘Hello Mr. Weening. This is XYZ bank, we have a few purchases we would like to discuss with you on your credit card’

‘Sure’ (I get these once in a while. I remember one particularly embarrassing situation 12 years ago when I was with clients in Austin Texas and went to put through a $4000 dinner bill and they refused me until I convinced them that I was not on a bender with someone else’s card)

‘Has you wife just attempted and failed to make an Internet purchase at XYZ for £500 and did she make an online purchase at XXX computer store for £480?’

(thinking .. unless she is buying me an early Christmas present …. I doubt it. Although I did tell her that I need another 1TB USB drive and that the boys computers need 2GB of additional RAM …)

‘Let me check … Nope’. They then closed down her card and (to be safe, on my request) my card. That could have been the end of it.

I then did something that I am not sure is allowed, I asked for the web site where the purchase went through and called into the retailer. I explained the situation and they stopped the shipment and cancelled the order.

I could have just let it go into the big Mastercard fraud center where the goods would have been shipped and Mastercard would just looked at it as the cost of doing business. But that is wrong.

A small win for the good guys.