ANZ bank have fraud protection that they call Falcon. Essentially the goal of it is to prevent fraudulent transactions taking place on your credit cards and in my case, my Visa debit card connected to my savings account. Nice idea in theory, but in my case, annoying and wrong.
It all began when I received a suspicious text message claiming my card had been suspended due to a security concern to prevent unauthorised usage. At first I thought it was a scam, so I called ANZ and sure enough, it was the real deal (the number it came from was +61427042684).
They verified my details, then told me Visa international had detected a security concern (he couldn’t tell me what that concern actually was). The customer service guy by the name of Greg was very nice about it and went through my last 5 transactions over the phone with me to see if anything suspicious stood out.
He would list the name of the transaction and then the amount. I responded yes to all of them as my own transactions. Not one single transaction he mentioned was suspicious in the slightest. The last transaction I made was at a lunch place with a French sounding name called La Rotisserie that did fried chicken and whatnot.
Could it have been the French sounding name that rung alarm bells? Maybe Visa thought $18 for a chicken sandwich with a bottle of water was akin to fraud and suspended my card? It was a good sandwich though (and massive). Perhaps a little overpriced.
Anyway… After saying yes to all of the transactions and confirming nothing sounded suspicious I expected my card to be reactivated, no problem right? Nope. Greg informed me that I would be sent out a new card complete with a new card number, CVC code and a new pin number too, and to destroy my current card immediately.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
No fraudulent transactions were made on my card, nor were there any attempts they told me of trying to make fraudulent purchases, so why suspend my card?
Now I have to wait 3 to 5 business days for a new card and then the pin number will follow 2 business days after I receive the card. Because my card number has changed I now have to go through all of my services and change my card details to match the new card.
This means having to change my Paypal details, the credit card details for my hosting, Playstation Network account and a plethora of other accounts online were I use my credit card.
As a result of my card getting cancelled, online services that I pay for using my credit card will now fail. I have already received an email from Github informing me my payment has failed. Luckily, I have two weeks to pay (my new card should arrive by then).
Who knows maybe one of those said providers were hacked and someone got my card details? ANZ didn’t give me any information as to why they are sending me out an entire new card with new pin number and card number.
It is very frustrating that I have to go to the bank if I need to withdraw any cash and I have to pray nothing that gets billed to my card before I get a new one and get online to change over the details.
If someone did get a hold of my details, I am grateful ANZ stopped them. However, there were no suspicious transactions and ANZ couldn’t even tell me what the security concern was with my card in the first place.
Fortunately my wife-to-be has a card for the account and that hasn’t been suspended, but it is a completely different number.