Today started out promising. Lovely weather.

We decided to buy a pedal boat. It would be great exercise and would get us out on the lake. Menards had them on sale (great price) but they’d sold out and rainchecks weren’t available. We were disappointed.

On the way home we made a couple additional stops. I was surprised when my credit card was rejected at Meijers (but figured it was a glitch in their equipment.) At Home Depot, John’s card was also rejected. Something was up!

When I got home I immediately called Chase/Visa. They said they’d spotted a problem with our account and realized John’s card had been compromised. To make sure there were no further attempts, they’d put a hold on both our cards. (They’re linked through my business.)

It was impressive to find that they’d caught the attempts before they cleared and stopped them before there were more. There were a lot of them ranging from only about $10 to nearly $300. Maybe there were even higher amounts but those were the ones mentioned. Three of the transactions showed up as pending on my on-line account and weren’t places we’d ever heard of. The customer service rep (who sounded like “Peggy” from the credit card commercial) said he would cancel all charges, and cancel John’s card, which was the only one that had been compromised.

John uses his card primarily for gas and food purchases. No big deal.

I was assured my card would not be affected.

After dinner, I went to the Chase/Visa website to check the names of the businesses and to look over our previous statements but everything was cancelled. I called Chase/Visa and found they’d made a mistake. Instead of cancelling John’s account, MY account had been voided. Our MAIN HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNT was gone. His was still active! They immediately cancelled his. There was no way to “restore” mine so two cards are being issued with new account numbers.

I did find the reason the usage had triggered concern was that John’s card was being used in New York Friday and the items purchased didn’t fit our profile. Obviously that wasn’t us. Glad Visa caught it, but wish they hadn’t cancelled my card.

That card is the one we use for all of our on-going monthly payments. Everything! Our Upper Peninsula light bill, our cable in Florida, our cellphone, my Paypal account, Wall Street Journal, newspapers, phone service, domain host, motel reservations, domain names, and several more accounts are paid from that card. There are at least 15 accounts that I’ll have to revise and/or notify when we get our new cards. Since the old card will be rejected, payments won’t be made with the old card. One due date is the 5th. I have to work fast and I hope I remember all of them. The cards should arrive Monday.

We have great credit. I never have to send checks, nor do I worry about anything being paid on time. Everything is auto-paid with my credit card and the credit card is paid off each month in full from a bank account. It was easy, until this happened!!!

I’m bummed!!!

Note: Knowing that I’m an internet techie, a lot of folks are going to think John’s problem was somehow caused by internet use. But John’s credit card numbers were never given out on line. He used his exclusively for purchases from gas stations, stores like Meijer, Home Depot, Walmart , Menards, restaurants, his dentist and grocery stores. And he never lost or mislaid his card. We can only think that a store that John purchased from, had their transactions hacked.