Realtors Beware of Fraud When Purchasing Business Products
Yesterday I found out I was the victim of fraud, resulting from a purchase I made from a well-known real estate business products company. It turns out one of their employees, who had helped me place an order over the phone (I tried to do so online but needed the art department to fix some art work), stole my credit card number and went on a shopping spree – spending about $1000 on my card. 
I found out about this because of the kindness of a vendor, who realized that my zip code and the shipping zip code were different. He Googled me and called me to ask if I had spend a large sum at his online fishing clothing site. I don’t fish, nor do I wear fishing related clothing. Thank you to this vendor, who took the time to investigate what he thought was a “fishy” purchase (pun intended), I contacted my bank.
It took me a few hours to realize that I knew exactly where the fraud occurred. Luckily for me, I do not use my business credit card often, other than some monthly recurring business fees. I happened to use it to order some products early in May, and the company was based in Florida. The 9 charges that were made on my card were in Florida, so I put it all together and contacted the company. They were able to figure out who it was and I filed police reports both in Florida and in my hometown.
The lesson I learned from this is that I will never again provide my credit card information verbally when placing an order. I did receive apologies from management (personally I would have comped me for my order for all the trouble I went through – I had to deal with this for several hours during my work day – but that’s a difference of opinion in the definition of customer service).
So next time you order business products online, no matter how trustworthy the site, if you have no alternative than to pay over the phone make sure to ask for the supervisor or top manager – do not give your personal information to ANY employee. Sadly, the guy who helped me place my order that day was great on the phone – hopefully he will be practicing those skills from a cell for the next several years (I was told that he had done this before and they couldn’t prove it – they now have evidence to do so). Makes me miss prosecuting people like this guy. In short, he messed with the wrong lady.
If you are into fishing and want to buy some great clothes, please shoot me an email and I will hook you up with the vendor’s site, as I checked it out and he really has some nice clothing! There are still good people in this world, and that solidifies my belief in the human race. So thank you to Neil from Florida!
