I love to travel, which is quite obvious from this quest that I’m on. I love exploring new places and just getting out and wandering around. Luckily my wife likes to travel as well, though maybe not quite as much I do. Touch wood, but so far we’ve been fairly lucky when it comes to things going relatively smoothly on our trips. We’ve missed connections a couple of times, but the airlines have been good about accommodating, except for the one time we had to pay for our own hotel room in Newark when we missed our connection coming back from San Juan. And we almost missed our flight to Portugal 2 years ago. We were sitting in the Philadelphia airport, just around the corner from our gate, casually waiting for them to call our flight to board. Little did we know that they don’t call flights to board (well not that one anyway) and we were very lucky that 4 other couples were in the same boat as us because they had already closed boarding by the time we all figured out what was going on.
But aside from some missed connections and maybe a couple of other minor inconveniences with seat assignments, we’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve been on four cruises, a trip to the U.K., a trip to Portugal and Spain and of course many many car trips south to Myrtle Beach and other U.S. destinations. That all being said, there is an inherent risk in travel. Crap happens and you’ve just got to learn to roll with it because if you don’t, you might not ever travel again.
Well here I was today, two weeks removed from my latest golf venture to Delaware and New Jersey and I was faced with one of the hazards of travel. I went to use my credit card for a very small purchase and the card was declined. Now I knew there was no issue with the credit limit, so obviously something strange was amiss. You guessed it, my card had been compromised! After contacting the fraud department at my credit card company they informed me that someone had tried to purchase $500 worth of stuff at a pharmacy in New Jersey yesterday. And you know what…good on the credit card company to deny the purchase and immediately flag the card. The downside of course is that I was informed I need to shred my existing card and they will be sending me a new one. An inconvenience, but not the end of the world.
The sad reality to all this is that I use my credit cards sparingly and only at establishments that I feel are secure (large gas station chains, chain restaurants etc. etc.) And on this past trip, I only used that card a couple of times so it is very shocking that it was cloned, based on where I used it. Just goes to show you, one never knows!
