As I have noted, I love using my DISCOVER card. It was the first bank credit card I ever owned, back in 1986. I had a few store cards, notably Sears, before that; in fact, Sears and DISCOVER were once linked financially, but I don’t believe that’s still the case.
DISCOVER is cool. They send me an e-mail saying: you want 5% cashback on this category of purchases for the next three months? Sure! They make it easy, whereas some credit card companies put you through hoops in order to get rewards. When I go to Amazon.com, usually for gifts, I often use the DISCOVER cashback feature, which can be posted automatically.
I went to Radio Shack to make a purchase on January 17 of just under $20, and of course, used my DISCOVER card. My notification to pay my bill came in late February, due on March 10, and it seemed high, but I didn’t actually look at it until the week it was due.
Included was a charge of $163.04 for Radio Shack on January 28. I didn’t remember going there a second time, so I called the store. I was told that among the purchases was a BluTooth; since I’ve NEVER owned a BluTooth, I KNEW instantly these weren’t my items.
Here’s the weird thing, though: BOTH Radio Shack purchases were allegedly made by a woman named… let’s call her Toodles. Now I DID make the January 17 purchase; I remember climbing over a snowbank to get to Westgate shopping center.
The other thing is that the purchaser had the card. Because I have been a customer so long, I have this 25th-anniversary card, as well as the regular one. I must have used the anniversary card there, then the regular card with my subsequent purchases. Bad form on my part.
So I call DISCOVER, explain this all a couple of times. The guy in the fraud unit is as puzzled as I that the $20 purchase that I acknowledge making is attributed to Toodles.
One of the things I was required to do was make a police report, so when I got home, I called the non-emergency number, and two policemen came over to my house. I gave them the information, and I could tell they were a bit suspicious of ME. Why, if, in fact, Toodles had had my card, did she make only that one purchase? I couldn’t answer that, of course. Guilt? Fear of getting caught? How the heck do I know?
I was without my DISCOVER card for less than a week, from March 6 to March 11, when the replacement cards arrived in the mail.
That previous card I had so long actually had memorized the sixteen digits. I’ll miss you, old DISCOVER card number. Yikes, I had to contact the cable company, because the autopay went on my old DISCOVER card…
I hope we hear the explanation of this mystery!
At this point, I’m not holding my breath, SP.
Sears sold its interest in Discover back in 1993; it passed through a couple of brokerage houses before emerging as a standalone company in 2007.
I remember, during one of my infamous road trips, passing by the drive-thru of Discover Bank, the official issuer of all these cards. (It was in a strip mall in Greenwood, Delaware.)