I’m a person that likes consistency and certainty. I don’t take many risks, and I never gamble. Actually… I’m not too fond of gambling as a whole; especially if it’s done by somebody else that is using my money.
This morning, on the way to work, I stopped by an ATM to grab some lunch money. I punched in my security code, and checked my balance. I was quite surprised to see that my balance was about 300 Euro lower than I expected it to be. I scratched my head a bit and tried to remember what I might have purchased in the last few days that is worth 300 euro.
When I came home and opened the mail from the credit card company, I found my answer. There was a transaction of 329 euro from “pstars.com”. The envelope also had a letter in it from the credit card company, stating that my credit card was blocked and with a request that I give them a call to verify some transactions.
It turns out that “pstars.com” is used by an internet poker website, and my credit card was used to purchase 500 US Dollar worth of credit for internet poker. This seemed suspicious to the credit card company, because over the last 3 years all my credit card was used for was Second Life, World of Warcraft and the rent of my web server. I don’t gamble, and my poker skills suck ass; why would I spend 329 bucks on a poker site ? It doesn’t really make sense, does it ? The credit card company will send me a form which I can fill out to verify that the transaction was invalid. The credit card company will refund my 329 euro, and try to hunt down whoever tried to steal it.
It seems that I’ve become the victim of a credit card fraud. 3 days before the poker site made its transaction, I bought a game for my mobile phone on clickgamer.com, using my credit card. I don’t know if the website was hacked or if the owners of the website are scammers; but this is the only thing that I can think of where it went wrong. I’ve had a VISA card for 9 years, paid for a lot of stuff online with it and never had issues. I’ve got a MasterCard since 3 years, paid for a lot of stuff and never had issues up until now.
In general I still think it’s safe to buy stuff using credit cards, but there are always some assholes that will try to steal from you. Life can be quite shitty sometimes…
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