what theft?

[expat]

Just on the phone to card provider, they spent ages trying to persuade me to pay for identity theft insurance.

AIUI, if someone dishonestly pretends to be me, some financial institutions may wrongly accept their word. So my card company wants me to pay them to take some steps to try to make it that I don't suffer unduly from people like them wrongly falling for someone else's fraud? ISTM that whoever "steals" my identity is a criminal, and whoever they deceive is a victim. Why should I pay to insure against their mistake?

[milanbenes]

oh dear


Milan.

[expat]

No really, I think it's a racket. Financial institutions find that identity theft is on the increase, fuelled by their own lax standards of identification and control. So what do they do? Tighten up their standards and take responsibility for their errors? No, make the punters take responsibility, and pay for insuring against their mistakes. Racket.

[thunderlizard]

Don't worry, I've just signed up for it for you anyway.

hth

tl

[ASB]

No really, I think it's a racket. Financial institutions find that identity theft is on the increase, fuelled by their own lax standards of identification and control. So what do they do? Tighten up their standards and take responsibility for their errors? No, make the punters take responsibility, and pay for insuring against their mistakes. Racket.

No offence has been commited against you. An offence has been committed against the card issuer. It needs the issuer to complain in order to progress anything. It is simply cheaper for them not to bother and average out against everybody in fees.

Whoever it was figured out a way of making the customers pay for it (again) by insuring sure gets my vote for creative marketing.

[xoggoth]

They need to develop this purchasing pattern thing a lot more. Like, if my credit card was used to spend more than 8 quid on a pair of shoes they should know it couldn't possibly be me.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

They (and HMG) spend a lot of time deiberately confusing Credit Card fraud with ID theft too.

[ASB]

They need to develop this purchasing pattern thing a lot more. Like, if my credit card was used to spend more than 8 quid on a pair of shoes they should know it couldn't possibly be me.

It can be a bleeding nightmare. Last time I was in Russia it's 4 am, about to go to the airport so I go to pay hotel bill. Discover card does not work. After lot's of twitting about was finally able to track down crapital one who kindly told me they'd cancelled the card because there were purchases at Bristol Airport, Amsterdam and Frankfurt close to each other.

Only way to pay the somewhat substantial bill was to get some bloody money wired since I couldn't use my debit card either since it was somewhat over the limit.

[xoggoth]

Went on a bit of a spending spree with my American Express once. In 2nd shop or 3rd they called the store and I had to convince them it was me.

[threaded]

No really, I think it's a racket.

You are spot on. This will only stop when the shops lose the money++.

But the card providers are worried that the shops will stop using their cards...

So it turns into a chicken and egg: no one wants to be first.