Today I'm really proud of my bank! Actually, this is the first time ever that I can say this 'cause normally they appear to be rather dull and only slightly competend bores who are only doing their job 'cause they can't think of something interesting to do with their lives. But today they amazed me. Because they noticed that someone was apparently trying to steal money from my credit card- and immediatedly stopped him !

Apparently what happened is that someone "used" my credit card to make two purchases of less then one US-Dollar in the states. But the merchant was not legible or something. Amazingly enough this triggered some bells with my banks fraud-people cause they figured I'd never buy two items for 38 and 46 cent with my CC. So they set my cards limit to 0.00. They told me that they assume that someone was just testing whether the card-number is valid and working, before they'd try to make some really big purchases. And of course it wasn't me who spent the money.

How I noticed the whole thing was a bit funny in itself: I tried to buy something over the net last week and for some reason just couldn't pay with my CC. At first I assumed that there was a problem with the website. But when this happened again some days later and when my second CC worked, I figured that there was something fishy going on. So I called my bank, who shportly after called me back and told me to call their fraud-division. Jez - in my mind I was already assuming that someone had spend some serious money with my card and that I was now the proud owner of a house in florida or a gold mine. I suppose you can imagine how happy I was that it was just few cents that raised the alarms!

Talking to the anti-fraud guy was quite interesting actually. I used the opportunity to ask him for advice concerning my trip. Basically he said: Don't ever use your CC in Malaysia or Indonesia and take a second card with you. Sound advice, I think.