Credit Card Advise

I am not one who would normally advocate for a credit card, but after my experience with having fraudulent charges on mine, I have to say that my Target Visa card is invaluable. My husband and I are trying to cut down on our use of credit cards. I now only use two. One of the cards is my Target Visa RedCard. I have had it for many years, and while I don't really like using it, sometimes it is a necessary evil. We recently got a call from the Target Visa folks about a suspicious charge made on our card. Upon further investigation, we found several unauthorized charges on our card that have been happening for a year now. While paying bills online saves paper and postage, it also makes for lazy bill paying. We foolishly paid the bill month after month, not checking the charges that were put on it. This week, with the help of Dixie in the Target Visa fraud department, I have put a stop to the charges and she even helped me get a refund from the company who charged my card.
Here is my advise to you, my fellow blog readers: 1.) If you have to have a credit card, make sure you get a Target Visa. They are looking out for you and will let you know if there is anything weird going on with your account, and they are on your side when attempting to recover money from unauthorized charges 2.) If you pay your bills online, please remember to check the charges so that you will notice strange activity and nip it in the bud before a whole year of unauthorized charges piles up.

There you go. That is my friendly, housewife advise for today!

Free Credit Report Scam

Just wanted to let everyone know that you need to be very careful when visiting the freecreditreport.com site. Apparently, I visited that site way back last December. I suspect I wanted to see what my credit score was since we were in the process of selling/buying homes. I don't even remember doing it. They seem to ask for a credit card number to "verify" your credit, and then you are on their "membership" role and they start charging your credit card $14.95 each. I used my Target Visa card, and it is a good thing I did because they called me last week inquiring about a suspicious charge made on my card from itunes. If they wouldn't have called about that, we wouldn't have looked back at our bills. My husband pays the bill online, so he never really looked at them, just paid it. As it turns out, there are 11 charges to our card from CIC Triple Advantage, 3 charges of $16.95 from someplace called Essential Savings Consumer Affairs, and then the one charge of $1.00 from itunes. None of these charges were authorized by my husband or me. I called the Target Visa people and they said that they can file a fraudulent charge claim against CIC, but they can only go back 90 days. I tried calling that CIC place, but they are on Pacific time and are three hours behind us, so here I wait. I want a full refund of my money, so we will see how far I get. In the meantime, my Target Visa card has been canceled and I will call those thieves this afternoon. Please, anyone reading this: DO NOT GO ON FREECREDITREPORT.COM!!!! It is a scam!