Debit Card Takes a Holiday

Friday, October 21, 2005

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Debit Card Takes a Holiday

By J’AMY PACHECO

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago when her husband asked if she knew the whereabouts of her debit card. He requested that she double-check to ensure it really was in her purse.

A local ATM had refused his attempt to withdraw funds, he said, and a call to the bank revealed that their account had already had its daily limit of funds withdrawn. When he advised the bank that no withdrawals had been made that day, the bank representative asked if his wife was “still out of the country.”

“Out of the country?” he responded. “She’s right here. We don’t even have passports.” Somehow, someone from Istanbul, Turkey had managed to duplicate his wife’s ATM card and had withdrawn more than $700 from their joint account in a two-day period.

It took a few days and a trip to a notary to get the situation resolved. I was stunned at the apparent ease with which international criminals had helped themselves to the account of my friends — one of whom is a police officer.

Years ago, before the term “debit card” existed, I worked for a bank that wanted to make a splash with its new ATM cards. In those days, it was inconceivable for people to allow access to their hard-earned funds through the use of a little piece of plastic, and getting people to try them was difficult.

So my employer issued an ATM card to each of us, and nicely demanded we use them. I did, and eventually found it to be convenient.

Several years ago, my husband talked me into trying out our bank’s new debit card service. It was an innovative idea, enabling us to use our ATM cards at businesses that didn’t accept ATM transactions but did take credit cards.

As neat as that sounded, I was reluctant to use it and instead wrote checks, preferring the paper trail that was left behind.

As time went by, though, my husband convinced me that the debit card was the way to go. I got to the point that I never carried cash or checks, and rarely carried a credit card. All I needed was my debit card and a driver’s license, and I could go anywhere.

In fact, in recent years, it has not been unusual for me to be out and about with no cash at all. I don’t think twice about driving the 70-ish miles to Disneyland carrying nothing more than my annual pass, license and debit card, and the change in the bottom of my theme-park bag. I can pay for just about anything there using my trusty debit card.

You could say that I’ve come to depend upon my favorite piece of plastic. You can’t, therefore, imagine what went through my mind when my husband reported that our bank account had been reduced to a measly $7 by someone in Shanghai, China.

He’d gone into our online banking service to check on a transaction, and was stunned to see our non-existent balance. A statement revealed repeated transactions in the amount of $247 and change from two locations in China — transactions that stopped only when our bank account was almost empty.

This discovery occurred on a banking holiday, so the best we could do was to cancel our debit cards. It was a good thing we did, because additional debits totaling nearly $1,000 were waiting in suspense when the bank opened the next morning. It took a few days and several phone calls to get our account back to normal.

At the moment, we’re still without replacement debit cards. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to use a new one when it arrives, because nobody knows for sure how this even happened.

Recent newspaper articles indicate at least 250 people in my region were also victimized, at the same time. (I know it’s more, because the newspaper doesn’t know about me, or my friends.) Obviously, somebody figured out a way to steal money from a lot of people in a short period of time — and they get to keep it.

I can’t help thinking that if these criminals are smart enough to figure out such an effective method for stealing so much money in such a short period of time, what could they accomplish if they put their energy into doing something to benefit mankind?

How rich would they be, legitimately?

The bank gave our money back, but the experience left me feeling like somebody had been in my house. It wasn’t a good feeling, and it’s left me thinking I can no longer depend on my own money to be available when I want it.

That’s scary. So here I am, back where I started, paying with cash and writing checks.

It’s a good thing I have that change in the bottom of my theme-park bag. It looks like I’ll never know when I may need it.