Has anyone else recently had fraud on cards used with Josh ?

[tommymonk]

In the last couple of days both my debit card and my Wife's credit card have had a whole bunch of money taken for items ranging from mobile phone top-ups to photo printing services.

 

We have both followed our bank's fraud procedure to cancel the cards and recover lost monies but the only place that we have *both* used these cards is to buy from Joshua of Perfect Clones.

 

The watches were bought months ago and I have nothing but praise for Josh and his products.

Edited May 24, 2013 by tommymonk

[panerai153]

There are so many ways that your information can get stolen, it's positively terrifying. I wouldn't think that if someone in josh's operation had your info, they would wait months to use the cards. I would bet that somewhere else there is a common thread, or it could be a coincidence that both of you got "cloned" at close the same time. Gas stations, kiosks in a mall, restaurants, everywhere you swipe your card are potentially corrupted and can get all of your info off your card. I have had several cards compromised in the past few years, including two AmEx cards and a Capital One Visa Card. In two of them, the fraud departments noticed charges that were outside my usual spending pattern, and called me for verification, the third involved a series of very small charges which the I noticed and called the credit card company. The fraud folks told me that sometimes the thieves will go on a "fishing " expedition, a few small charges to see if it's a good card, then they make a bunch of big charges and are gone.

 

The best protection is to be very diligent in checking your statement. Set it up online so you can check it often and not wait on a paper bill. Also the credit card companies will often work with you to tighten the restrictions on the cards, Sometimes that is a PITA, but it's better to have every sales clerk ask for a photo ID than have a bunch of stuff charged to your card. On my AmEx cards, I have it set up that no charges are allowed unless the shipping is to my home address, unless I specifically call and tell them I need to have something shipped somewhere else. they did that after  I got hit for about 6k in merchandise that was being shipped to an address several states away. I didn't have to pay a cent, but the credit card companies don't like to have to go to their customers and tell them they are clawing back money from fraudulent charges.

[billyfras]

Very very unfortunate. I haven't bought from Josh so I wouldn't be able to help. But I hope for the sake of this community that a TD is not the source of such fraud.

[Robotomic]

Same thing happened to my VISA a short time after purchase at another TD. I suspect the Chinese payment gateway has one or more corrupt employees.

That's why I now only use paypal.

[tommymonk]

Thanks for the comments, I am planning on buying future watches on a top-up Visa card to prevent future problems.

[imajedi]

Same happened to me a few months after purchase.

[ninjagaiden]

Same thing happened to my VISA a short time after purchase at another TD. I suspect the Chinese payment gateway has one or more corrupt employees.

That's why I now only use paypal.

Me too. Josh has a good workaround for Ebay payments. Using a Debit card for online payments is probably not the best thing to do...

[jaguaristic]

I will preface this by saying that I've had a couple of great experiences with Josh, and I'll be going back for a third time soon I'm sure.

Though I'm new to the rep world ony having caught "the bug" a couple months ago, my gut instinct says don't transmit credit/debit card info to over-seas businesses that deal in what is essentially smuggling contraband over international borders. I've choosen western union every time so that I have a buffer between my account info and the transaction.

 

I'm not saying the vendor would even be at fault. That account info has to bounce around a lot of places before it gets to a vendor, and could be intercepted many times along the way. Further, even a good ethically-stable employer can't always hire trustworthy people 100% of the time and control potentially crooked people in the banking industry that handles his side of the payment proccessing.

 

Many (all?) of these vendors, Joshua included, will take 5% off your purchase price which pretty much covers the western union transaction fee anyway, and it only adds maybe a day or 2 to the process, but you get a lot more peace of mind. I would recommend WU for any rep transaction. My understanding is that many of re-loadable debit cards and gift cards don't out there won't work for international purchases, so definitely double check on that while choosing your card if you plan to go that route.

[highoeyazmuhudee]

VISA prepaid is always an option, but there are activation fees

[imajedi]

Step 1: buy watch

Step 2: call credit card co. and tell them you lost your card.

Step 3: receive new card with new numbers in mail.

Step 4: activate new card.

[martijnp]

I've got my credit card linked to my paypal account. Did a few transactions with Joshua, no problem at all. Did the bank pay you back? This scares me a little bit 

[tommymonk]

I've got my credit card linked to my paypal account. Did a few transactions with Joshua, no problem at all. Did the bank pay you back? This scares me a little bit 

 

They paid me back within 5 minutes and said that they would be sending out a questionnaire that will be submitted to the police (I guess this is part of their underwriter policy).

 

I signed up for one of these https://www.kalixa.com/Pay (EU only I think) It looks like the best of all the providers. Should be fine for making overseas payments too

Edited May 29, 2013 by tommymonk

[conx]

I also have a kalixa pre-pay. The only downside I find is that it is a MasterCard and many dealers don't accept MasterCard. I haven't found a pre-pay visa card yet.

I'm sure Josh wouldnt be involved in anything underhand as it would not be worth the chance of damaging his business, but as others have stated there are many other points in the chain where card details could be syphoned off.

[GBOGH]

I would always use the Paypal option online if available instead of the merchant's cc processor, no cc number shared. And this is just me, but I NEVER use my bank account debit card for online purchases. I try to stick to one credit card for use with online purchases, one with a lower limit and rock solid fraud protection. All the above applies ten fold for international online purchases, and I would say probably 100 fold for online illegal rep trade.

Edited May 29, 2013 by GBOGH