Tag Archives: discover

Discover Card Fail, then Win

This is a case of Discover card FAIL followed by a Discover card WIN.

In early December, Bally Fitness sold the bulk of it’s health clubs to LA Fitness.

As you might have heard in local business news, the transfer was not handled very well by Bally or LA Fitness.

Well, to add insult to injury, Bally almost screwed me over.

In late November, they charged my Discover card $240 for my annual renewal … unfortunately, I had never approved the charge.

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Convenience Checks Redux

In recent months the credit card companies (Chase & Discover, mostly) have ramped up their efforts to get me to use “Convenience Checks”.  Almost every statement includes a batch of them.

I’ve never liked the fact that they send them … first, and foremost, because I never use them.  Secondly, I consider them a serious security risk.  If someone rifles through my mailbox (which has no security) and grabs my statement, they could easily cash the checks.  Yes, I know I probably wouldn’t be liable for the amount … but it would be a major pain to figure out what was going on.

I finally got around to calling both Chase and Discover to request that my account be flagged so I never get Convenience Checks again.

In both cases, the customer service person I talked to understood my concerns … and updated my account appropriately.  I was warned that there might be one ore two more mailings sent out, as the convenience checks are setup in advance … but I can deal with that.

Hmmm … now that I think about it a bit … that doesn’t really make sense … at least in the case of Discover … because the checks are attached to my statement, which is clearly custom printed on demand at the end of my billing cycle.

Oh well, as long as they don’t send me more than 1 or 2 more batches, I’ll be happy.

New Credit Card Number

What a pain … Discover card has issued Ginny and I new cards with new account numbers.

A few weeks ago I got an email from Discover indicating that we were getting a new account number …

As part of a recent systems upgrade, you will be issued a new Discover Card with a new account number.

At first I thought it was just another phishing scam … but they had all the relevant information correct (last 4 digits of the card number and my full name).

For the past two weeks my daily Quicken download was failing on the Discover account … so I guess it’s legit.

Well, today the new cards came and, as promised, a new account number.   Now I get to go through the hassles of changing credit card number with those vendors I have recurring charges with.   What a pain.

This begs the question … why would they need to issue a new account number?   According to another website I found Discover is doing this to “millions” of their customers.   This smells very very fishy.   Another site I found mentioned a “security update”.   Bill Roper ran into the same thing … except he found someone doing fraudulent charges on his old account.

Methinks that Discover had a security breach recently … and aren’t owning up to it.