The bulk of people do not think anything of it when they hand over a debit card to purchase something, but not those that have been burned by debit cards, debit cards that can be used like credit cards. In 2009, a native of San Jose, California employed his debit card to book a rental car that he wanted to drive from Memphis Tennessee to Saint Louis while he took a vacation.
Supposedly, the car would have cost him about two hundred and forty dollars. When he went to buy an item in Memphis, he discovered that his bank account had been put on freeze. What had happened was that the rental car agency had put a five hundred dollar hold on his account, an amount that was high enough to trigger a fraud alert at his bank. The man got his account reactivated immediately, but the five hundred dollar hold remained. Not even until he turned in the car, but for two days after that.
This man seems to have gotten off a lot easier than others. Three years ago, an identity thief stole a woman’s debit card number and made six hundred dollars worth of fraudulent purchases. Going back and forth between her bank and the merchants took up a lot of time and caused a lot of pain.
She eventually got some of the charges repaired, but wasn’t able to regain almost one hundred and sixty dollars worth of the charges. The victim believes that because her loss was so miniscule, it really did not receive any attention from the police. Unluckily, what is not a big deal for law enforcement obviously has a big impact on someone that is struggling to pay their bills.
Identity theft can often be much tougher to recover from than many people think. Some people shrug off the idea of identity theft because it hasn’t happened to someone that they know or to themselves. Unfortunately, this is one of things that people should take seriously from the start, guarding themselves and their property before issues happen.