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Ask HN: Weird Credit Card Stuff

4 points by pyuser583 ↗ HN
I’ve been noticing weird charges on my credit card. Shortly after I receive them I get a negative credit for the same amount, resulting in 0.

Also the dates on line items change.

I’ve worked in software for in house payment processing. I know it’s complicated, and weird stuff can happen.

What would explain behavior like this?

It never ends up costing me anything, so I feel it’s a waste of time to pursue.

6 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] thread
gregjor
My credit card issuers all have customer support numbers. Maybe they will have more information than people reading HN.
dangerface
Sounds like money laundering, some one gets your credit card info then uses it to make purchases with clean money then pays off your credit card with dirty money. Make sure it all balances out to 0 at the end of the day and you probably won't notice for a while.

Report it as fraud and get a new card.

gregjor
The hard part of money laundering is getting dirty cash into a bank account. Since you can't pay credit cards with cash the payments must come from a bank account direct debit or check. If you already have the dirty money in a bank account you don't need to further wash it by making purchases and then paying for them. If this was some kind of money laundering I would expect large amounts or thousands of transactions -- no one needs to launder $100 or less.

Reporting to the card issuer and getting a new card is good advice.

jlgaddis
Too little info to provide any real advice besides the obvious (see below). Out of curiosity, though, do you recognize the name of the merchant?

--

Anyways, there's a toll-free number on your card. Call it and explain the situation to them. They'll likely re-issue your card and call it a day, unless the specific transactions trigger some sort of "red flag" (although, if that were the case, the fraud department would likely have noticed before you did and already took action).

There are certain types of questions that aren't really appropriate for an "Ask HN". This is one of them.

freemint
Some companies "block" a certain amount of money on your card, so they can make a deduction against it later. For example automated gas pumps can "block" more then they probably charge, so the card can not be drained while gasoline is put into the tank.

https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/164670/credit_c....

This might be a less notorius explanation then other which are offered here.

noSyncCloud
Merchants will sometimes make a small charge transaction, which they then reverse, to verify that a card is active/valid.