I have too many credit cards. I don’t overspend. No, really, I don’t. I just have more cards than any one human being could ever use — except maybe Lindsey Lohan. This happens because I fly on airplanes a lot. And nowadays, invariably, at some point during the flight, a cheery attendant who sounds like she might be on amphetamines picks up the microphone and makes the following pitch:
“Hi, all you wonderful passengers. I want to tell you about a very, very special offer that is only available today — and only to you fabulous people who happen to be on this Junket Airlines flight to Cleveland. If you apply for one of our credit cards right now — while you’re still clinging to your seat in terror after that bout of turbulence — we will give you 800,000 Junket Air bonus mileage points that you can use, as long as it’s in the next 48 hours. We’ll also give you free pretzels for a lifetime (subject to availability), a companion pass that can only be used at 3 a.m. on May 22, and my colleague here, Tammy, will give you her firstborn male child.”
Now, the thing is that I’m always bored on an airplane, because I never watch the movie, plus I’m usually on airlines so cheap they won’t even give you old reruns of “Rawhide” to watch. This makes me a sitting duck for these kinds of offers.
And that’s why I ended up with a wallet full of airline credit cards, most of which I never use. This is stupid, I know. (If I gave you a list of every stupid thing I do, we’d be here until the Rapture comes.)
And, if you’re like me, you may have gotten notices that your security has been breached on one or more cards, or maybe from one of your doctors who demand you provide them will all your personally identifiable information, so it can sit in their databases forever waiting to be stolen and used by bad guys.
“We found your information on the dark web!” I will read sometimes in an email from an identity theft company. Well, fine, so get it off there. Otherwise, why are you telling me this?
Anyway, I’d never had any problems with identity theft, fortunately, because I know it’s a nightmare.
And then I got a call this morning, purportedly from Chase Bank, asking me if I’d applied for new credit card accounts in Dallas, Texas. The phone legend said the call was from Chase, so it looked legitimate. And, as I mentioned, I knew my data had been compromised in the past. Naturally, I said no, I hadn’t tried to open any new accounts. The call went on, the guy didn’t ask me for any personal information, in fact he seemed to know rather a lot already. He said they were cancelling the applications, he gave me a “complaint number” and said he was forwarding me to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is a real thing.
After a bit of a wait, a woman came on the line who identified herself as “Summer” and said she worked for this bureau. She had an accent, as did the guy I’d already spoken to from “Chase.”
Now, I do not mean to be disrespectful to people with accents. Some of them are quite delightful. However, it did make me wonder if the the Chase guy was in a call center in Timbuktu.
Anyway, “Summer” read me a whole lot of information off my credit report to verify herself, and all of it was accurate. Yes, I had a mortgage with this bank. Yes, I had these credit cards. And so forth. She even knew the numbers. Then she asked me for the security code off my Hawaiian Airlines card (get our card and we’ll fly you to Hawaii for the rest of your life for free). I told her, “Sorry, I’m not giving you any information.” She said that was good, she was glad I was wary. Then, she went into this long confusing speech about the Fair Credit Reporting Act and some other law I didn’t even understand. It finally dawned on me that this was a scam, but, damn, it was the best scam I’d ever almost fallen for. Obviously, someone inside who actually has access to that information was involved.
I hung up on her and called the real Chase, only to be told that no one had tried to open accounts using my information. Then I called the number that “Summer” had given me, and it seemed to be a porn line. Hmm. Probably not the federal government.
While I’ve been writing this column, I have received two more calls, one allegedly from “Capital One” about my card, which is interesting because I don’t have a Capital One card and never will, because decades ago they ticked me off and I’ll never use them again. Then, I got another bogus call. Criminy. I hope I don’t have to change my phone number! And, yes, I have spam protection on my line, but it doesn’t catch all the spoofing calls.
So forgive me, but I have to go now and put holds on my accounts with the credit reporting agencies. Like a colonoscopy, it is a pain in the rear end but I have to do it anyway.