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Old 11-26-2018, 01:31 PM   #41
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I'm surprised how much praise there is for credit card companies in this thread. They're participants in a system that steadily passes expenses on to consumers and have refused to secure the system.
I don't know.
For those of us who pay the full balance every month (no interest payment) there's no expenses passed on that I'm paying.
Yes, there's a 2%-3% merchant cost built in to purchases but that's whether you use cash or charge.

For a $50 annual fee, the convenience of secure online payment, worldwide acceptance, fraud protection and very often some sort of purchase insurance protection, I think it's a pretty good deal.
JMHO
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Old 11-26-2018, 01:44 PM   #42
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Originally Posted by sengsational View Post
I'm surprised how much praise there is for credit card companies in this thread. They're participants in a system that steadily passes expenses on to consumers and have refused to secure the system. They're sailing a 50 year old leaky boat and get praise for bailing. What about fixing the hull?
The CC companies haven't "fixed the hull" because it is not yet cost-effective to do so. When it is, they will.

Bear in mind you're talking about revamping a major financial system, not just the credit card companies, but also every merchant in the U.S. and maybe the world if they want world-wide compliance with new standards. While I have no idea what all that would cost I think it is a safe bet that it isn't cheap.
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Old 11-26-2018, 02:44 PM   #43
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I don't know.
For those of us who pay the full balance every month (no interest payment) there's no expenses passed on that I'm paying.
Yes, there's a 2%-3% merchant cost built in to purchases but that's whether you use cash or charge.
Everyone pays, including you. Your share is smaller because the people who pay cash and the people who carry a balance are subsidizing you. One of the problems is that people don't think they're paying for the fraud because they get the money back for specific fraudulent transactions. They don't realize that there's a hidden "credit card fraud tax" on every transaction.

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The CC companies haven't "fixed the hull" because it is not yet cost-effective to do so. When it is, they will.
Since they simply pass the costs onto the consumers, it will never be "cost effective"! Let's say fraud tripled. They would increase the fees to merchants, who would increase prices to consumers. The card companies would probably make even MORE money! Admittedly, it would not go that way forever because at some point more merchants would start charging a fee for using credit cards (or discounting for cash...same thing), and credit card usage would drop-off. That's the only force on the credit card companies right now. Also, maybe if they get to the point of inconveniencing customers due to blocking legit charges, I guess that could be another force on them. That one is a real PITA in my book, a huge dissatisifier they might wish to remedy.

But one thing is for sure: I'm not checking my statement every minute or being annoyed by alerts. To heck with them! I'm not being an unpaid volunteer baler for their leaky hull! My solution is to have multiple no annual fee cards to defend from when one card is out of service due to having been compromised or locked due to legit transactions that their algorithms say are suspicious. The ONLY reason I'm able to do this is because legislation is in place that makes the bad charges their problem. I'm going to continue to lean heavily on that.

Maybe the new legislation could just be a required line on the credit card statement that indicated what your share of paying for fraudulent transactions was. The CC company would add up all fraudulent charges and allocate it to the dollar value of the transactions. So the guy who had $200 worth of transactions in a month would see a number twice as large as the guy with $100 worth. But if you added up all the dollar values across all the CC's held by the company it would equal what they covered in fraud.

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This month, your share of the fraud was $2.15.
Then there could be additional government reporting that allowed consumers to shop for credit card issuers that had lower fraud percentage.
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Old 11-26-2018, 02:50 PM   #44
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Yet another reason not to use debit cards.
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Old 11-26-2018, 07:59 PM   #45
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I don't think it really matters what system is in place to stop fraudsters. They are smarter than me and will always find a way. I am also thankful for the cc cos that have caught fraud on my cards, although it has not happened in quite a while. Knock on wood...
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Old 11-27-2018, 06:13 AM   #46
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Originally Posted by sengsational View Post
Everyone pays, including you. Your share is smaller because the people who pay cash and the people who carry a balance are subsidizing you. One of the problems is that people don't think they're paying for the fraud because they get the money back for specific fraudulent transactions. They don't realize that there's a hidden "credit card fraud tax" on every transaction.
For me, hardly enough to offset the convenience.

Everyone pays for something; I don't suppose there are many businesses that do not pass on their costs to the consumer.
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Old 11-27-2018, 09:07 AM   #47
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YARNTUDC
Yet another reason not to use debit cards.
Debit cards are the worst. None of the legal protections built into credit cards and lots of other disadvantages.
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Old 11-27-2018, 09:19 AM   #48
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I don't suppose there are many businesses that do not pass on their costs to the consumer.
They can try and at times succeed, but...

Econ 101 says Price is a function of Supply and Demand. Note that Cost is not there. For example: At some point people will choose a substitute business if the the guy getting ripped off by thieves keeps raising prices. Customers don't care about his costs, just the price as compared to other businesses and other products.

At some point, people won't pay if the price is to high regardless of how costly it is to deliver the goods and services.
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Old 11-28-2018, 04:49 PM   #49
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So much for fixing everything. Not only did they decline payment for the incoming Amazon charge (2 shipments, 2 charges) that they said would be no problem, they declined payment for the pending Amazon charge that they said would post no problem. I got an email from Amazon saying I was disputing the charge the first charge then got another email that the second charge was being disputed. I thought the "chat" feature was great due to no waiting on the phone and everything was in writing so there couldn't be a misunderstanding. I'm rethinking "chat" and about keeping my AMEX card.
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Old 11-28-2018, 04:54 PM   #50
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So much for fixing everything. Not only did they decline payment for the incoming Amazon charge (2 shipments, 2 charges) that they said would be no problem, they declined payment for the pending Amazon charge that they said would post no problem. I got an email from Amazon saying I was disputing the charge the first charge then got another email that the second charge was being disputed. I thought the "chat" feature was great due to no waiting on the phone and everything was in writing so there couldn't be a misunderstanding. I'm rethinking "chat" and about keeping my AMEX card.
If you were told this during a chat session, do you have a record of that session. You can generally save a copy of the session.
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Old 11-28-2018, 05:12 PM   #51
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Yep I saved the chat and each rep told me they could see the chat and what was said. The last rep told me I should contact Amazon and tell them to resubmit the bill...pardon me. I went on Amazon and switched the charges to a different charge card. Bothers me too that Amazon was told that I was "disputing" the charges.
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Old 11-29-2018, 08:11 AM   #52
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Chat sessions are usually bots. Bots are dumb.
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Old 11-29-2018, 08:34 AM   #53
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Chat sessions are usually bots. Bots are dumb.

Hmmm, I'll need to watch for that. Though as I recall, the chat sessions I have had, I had to wait and the responses were slow. I would think a bot would reply pretty quickly.

Though I recently had a conversation with a guy who had a career in sales and customer support, and he said he called into a support center (personal, not business), and he said it took him about five minutes to realize he was talking to a machine.

I guess the interesting thing there is, most of the more basic automated systems are pretty bad, so going from that to almost-human, just seems like a big gap, like the leapfrogged the middle steps?

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Old 11-29-2018, 08:46 AM   #54
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Chat sessions are usually bots. Bots are dumb.
I’ve never had an online chat session with someone who wasn’t obviously human.
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Old 11-29-2018, 09:18 AM   #55
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I’ve never had an online chat session with someone who wasn’t obviously human.
You may be surprised.

It depends on the question. I've been obviously "kicked out" to a human on some of these.

Some of them are getting pretty scary.
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Old 11-29-2018, 09:43 AM   #56
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You may be surprised.

It depends on the question. I've been obviously "kicked out" to a human on some of these.

Some of them are getting pretty scary.
I rarely chat. But the details in recent conversations were such that I sincerely doubt it was a bot. They weren't rote questions and near the end I did not get rote answers.

I tell you where I get robotic-style rote answers to my questions - that is calling customer service and talking to someone overseas with an obviously fake American accent and pretty hard to understand. They can never understand my actual question either, because they are too busy trying to match it to their script.
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Old 12-04-2018, 03:56 PM   #57
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I had the same problem. Someone is testing your card to see if it's valid with small purchases before using it to run some much larger purchases. You need to cancel the card and get it replaced.
They hit my card for a 10 cent charge and rebate. I check my card every day and caught it the day it happened. Called the cc company and got a new card.
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Old 12-04-2018, 06:31 PM   #58
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Not a bot. They respond to specific questions. AND I still haven't received my new card. When I contacted the "chat" people again they said that the date I was given for the card to arrive was a suggested date. Funny, didn't say suggested or approximate in the original chat. Even asked if I wanted it sooner than the date they gave me. After each chat session they ask you to rate the person that helped you. Should I have replied that the bot was satisfactory
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Old 12-05-2018, 12:35 AM   #59
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The really smart fraudsters check to see what payments you make all the time, & then sneak in an extra one. My son got hit with a massive ($10K+) charge after he missed seeing one of those! He wasn't responsible, but it still pissed him off!
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Old 12-05-2018, 04:10 AM   #60
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... Econ 101 says Price is a function of Supply and Demand. Note that Cost is not there.
Supply refers to the amount of product a business is willing to sell at a particular price point. The cost of producing that product is part of the supply determination, so cost is in there.
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