As the title says, I'm DONE with Amazon, and here's why.
I got a flurry of text messages last Saturday morning from both of my credit card companies AND from my bank that issued my debit card alerting me to possible fraud purchases on Amazon. So I made all of the necessary phone calls and got both credit cards changed to new account numbers and my debit card closed as well. But the bad news about that was that I had NO access to any money because the credit cards were closed and I didn't have the new ones, and I couldn't get a new debit card until Monday morning - and this on the day that my sister was coming down for the weekend. So I pulled the Amex card out that I keep for emergencies and used it for the weekend. Problem solved.
The new Discover card arrived Tuesday, and as of this morning (November 20th) I have not received the new Capital One card. I went and got a new debit card yesterday, so we're good, right?
Or so I thought. Last night at 10:45PM I got a text message alerting me to a possible fraudulent transaction on my wife's credit card that was linked to my old Discover card - the credit card that she has NEVER used. She's never even carried it - I gave it to her years ago and she put it away, where it sits to this day. So the text message told me to respond with 'yes' if I made the transaction, and 'no' if I didn't - and I immediately sent NO.
Someone else replied YES. On my TEXT MESSAGE program.
But since I had replied 'no' they locked the credit card anyway. When I got up this morning I went into my Amazon account (which is where my wife's card was used) and saw that not only was that fraudulent purchase listed, there were FOUR other purchases that had been denied for possible fraud as well, and those four purchases were made with - hang onto your underwear - THE CREDIT CARD THAT I HAVEN'T RECEIVED YET!
So I immediately called Capital One to find out what the fuck was going on, and during the conversation I was told that they have an agreement with Amazon and several other companies that whenever a credit card being used on their site was upgraded or changed, THEY AUTOMATICALLY SEND THE INFORMATION ON THE NEW CARD TO AMAZON.
Whoever hacked into my Amazon account had the information on my new credit card before I did, and used it to try and make purchases.
Yeah, I said the same thing as you just did. I immediately called Amazon and told them what was going on, and told them to close my account and delete all data in it immediately. That process usually takes ten days, and I had already set the process in motion two days ago, but as you can see someone still tried to use my account to make fraudulent purchases. When I told the guy from Amazon Customer Service this I also told him I wanted the account closed IMMEDIATELY, and that I was NOT going to wait ten days. I wanted it closed RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW.
And he did. My Amazon account is now gone, never to return.
So now my only issue is the one where someone else replied to a text message on my phone. So I called Spectrum and talked with a very nice lady who told me that Amazon sends out 3 kinds of notifications of possible fraud - an e-mail, a push notification, and a text message. She asked me if I had gotten them, and I told her I had received the e-mail and the text message, but had not gotten a push notification (I never use push notifications).
She then told me that whoever hacked into my Amazon account had set up push notifications to go to THEM, and when they responded 'yes' to the push notification about the fraudulent transaction, their response also showed up on my text message. That's how push notifications work.
So no, my phone wasn't hacked which was my last concern. I then told her what Capital One had told me about automatically updating credit card information with Amazon, and she was as astounded as I was.
As it stands right now, I have yet another new Capital One card coming (which is being expedited so I should have it tomorrow or Saturday at the latest), my Discover card is good because I haven't entered it into ANY electronic database (nor will I), and I have a safe, secure, functioning debit card.
The common denominator in this is Amazon. One of THEIR employees hacked into my account and made a bunch of fraudulent purchases at my expense, and when I asked the guy from Amazon Customer Service what they were going to do about it, I got the scripted tired old response of "we'll conduct an investigation and take the appropriate actions."
Which means they won't do shit. But that's fine, because I'm done with Amazon for good. My account is closed, the data is erased, and that's that.
If you have an Amazon account I strongly encourage you to either close it or use something like Google Pay or Apple Pay to buy things. But under NO circumstances should you use your debit card or a credit card! If they used PayPal I maybe would have kept my account, but they don't, so that's that.
Now to get on with the rest of my day. It's going up into the 70s today and I hear my bike calling me.
I must answer the call.
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