I know I shouldn’t admit to this, but yeah, I’m human too. I live in one of those travel ‘hacking’ households where one half of the couple is a bit zany, and the other one, my lovely wife, abides the hobby after a taste of free travel, but doesn’t actively participate in card churning or manufactured spend. Of course I highly recommend that nobody who reads this churns credit cards, because it is much better to keep the same one year after year and pay an annual fee…
My system for tracking our cards was once Mint.com, but I since blew that program up, it can’t keep up with my antics and is still reporting account balances that were wiped off 3 years ago. Then I moved onto Excel, but I stopped tracking that too, and now I use the power of my brain. Which it seems has been a bit stretched this past year. Where asthejoeflies ponders if he should quit this game, I am not as worried about my slip up in not catching the fraudulent charges, but I am annoyed that I paid the annual fee on my CSP!
The charges appeared on the wife’s Chase account. We have a deal where I will open up the card, and she will fly in a fancy plane. It was my job to track the accounts, and I failed. The good news is that all the charges were reversed without question. The bad news is that there was no fraud alert from Chase. I mean, the charges originated in Mexico and Brazil, and you’d think that could be a flag! I’m not the type to pass the buck though, it was purely my fault, as was missing the annual fee deadline. I recommend that you check into your accounts on a regular basis to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you too.
Is auto-pay part of the problem?
It is more likely to happen if you have a system like mine: Signup for card, configure online access, set autopay in full, meet spend in day, shelve card. I make an early payment if the utilization ratio is high. This might actually be one of the few times that adding auto-pay is a bad move, because if there was a charge overdue you’d likely receive snail mail or an account alert for payment due. Sure, that would come with some sort of penalty, and maybe even a credit score ding, but it would also serve as an alert system, and the credit ding, if any would be wiped from your account by the bank, as would the charge, and the penalty. Just a thought..
Anyway, it seems that when things get hectic, mistakes happen. Luckily charges are reversed, just make sure you guide them through it, my Chase Fraud rep was a bit dim, and wouldn’t look further back to the origin of the fraud without strict instruction. But the real damage, I got suckered into a paying an annual fee again, and that feels terrible!
Note, if you miss your fee within a certain window, which differs per bank, you can get it refunded after the fact, I think it is 60 days with Citi/Chase. And Amex will often prorate annual fees on cards like the Platinum et al so you could cancel mid year and get a refund, this is handy for times where you think that you missed the deadline, but really you haven’t. In my case, I missed the real deadline, and am the proud holder of newly minted CSP that does no good for me whatsoever!
Be careful!
I use Quicken desktop to track all of my transactions. Bank accounts, credit cards and debit-everything that I have except for Bluebird downloads automatically to the program. For Bluebirds, when the original charge on the credit card for a cash equivalent posts to the CC, I do a split transaction and record the card fees and then transfer the card balance of the card to Bluebird for tracking. I do have to manually record the spend out of the Bluebird account. Otherwise, all transactions download into Quicken and it’s very easy to see exactly where the money has gone, fees etc. in addition, I set up alerts on all the credit cards (using my cell phone number) to alert me for any “card not present” transaction and any transaction over a particular amount. That method has certainly made my MS tracking easy and gives me confidence that I’m not missing anything while juggling all the various cards and accounts.
Sounds good – truthfully, I wouldn’t use it because I have too many other things that are on my plate to ‘learn’ right now. I’ll just remember to log in every month or so to keep a watchful eye. Some technology can help for sure, but also there is a capacity and an investment in learning the nuance of the system.
I log in daily. Can’t imagine doing so otherwise with the volume I do. I have an excel spreadsheet to keep track to total spend, but use old fashioned paper to track various payments to ensure all payments arriving as expected (and to ensure no duplicate payments because have so many different accounts being used for payments). Then use a highlighter to cross out payments as they arrive – any non-highlighted entries shows me when a payment hasn’t arrived as expected.
I’d spot any unusual activity within 24hrs unless on some less-used cards of third tier issuers.
I should, and I do log in more with some accounts than others – this one was the wife’s Chase which she never uses, cards are dormant. That’s why it caught me out.
Google calendar with alerts works for me. I track with paper and pen, old school but faster than any of the fancy methods I’ve tried.
I’ve been hit with fraudulent charges twice. Hate the feeling when you first realize it happened.
Yeah, simple and effective, might have to use that.
When I receive the monthly email that my statement is ready, I review the charges for that credit card. No need to set reminders or anything. Chase is funky with fraud alerts anyhow… Been in CA for a week now and just got my first one for $20sh at in n out.
I’ve just gone down the road of ignoring them, plus there is a glitch with chase where they email me someone else’s statement so I devalued the importance of those emails due to that. Good to hear that they are tracking your burger habits!
I don’t really know anything about fraud alerts… how they generate them, that is. I rarely get them, and never tell the card companies where I’m going. Rather, I only get them when I’m buying hundreds of dollars of gift cards, but sometimes that’s home and sometimes that’s away.
I’ve had fraud alerts for actual fraudulent charges almost instantly. They certainly seem to know what they’re doing in my case. Sorry they failed you.
I don’t have a good system, but probably need one. I just check my accounts fairly regularly. But that could by daily or monthly depending upon things.
Matt,
I know it is an ancient application with a lot of history but take a look at Quicken. They support automatic download of all major financial players and you can quickly review your past history overall account history, mark charges etc. Best of all the app is offline so you will have access to your data anytime/anywhere.
Cost like $40 on sale and they will not force you to upgrade for at least 3-5 years.
Opps, I missed Skyward already recommended it, but your time invested will pay off real soon I promise vs. manually checking all your account. It is priceless especially when an annual fee of an already forgotten credit card hits….:-)
When I get a min hopefully I can figure it out 🙂
I agree about Quicken. I’ve been using it since ’98, and when I started miles acquisition in 2011, Quicken was perfect. Download all my transactions every day, I have set up credit card ‘buckets’ for amex gift cards, visa gift cards, amex for target, bluebird/serve, Buxx cards. I can’t imagine how much harder this would be with spreadsheets. And, of course, making all of my credit card bills due the same day.
I’ll take your word for it! Right now I haven’t got a moment to breathe, but when I find one I’ll certainly look into it.
Why did you give up on Mint? I use it daily to monitor the accounts. I then use a google doc spreadsheet for all the rest of stuff (progress on min spend, MS activities, app history, etc).
It blew up on me, I have too many accounts and again, it needs constant adjustment and monitoring. For regular spending I think its great, but for the funky stuff it can’t keep up.
It’s funny that you mention charges on your Saphire…I had the same experience with my Saphire and then a month or two later, my wife’s. Both were charges from Mexico. I wonder if Chase had a security beach of some sort and if other people have had the same experience. I got the fraud alert though.
J
Yeah, not really sure how that happened, we don’t use that card for anything so it sounds like an unusual breach..
Matt – if you expand the “plus” sign next to the transaction what does it say? Is this where it mentions Mexico?
My wife’s card shows a Netflix charge and she said she never signed up.
Yes, when you expand there is some more info- mine had Mexico for one set and Brazil for another.