Credit card fraud is incredibly rampant and the security measures in place by banks and sites is so over the top it becomes difficult to even use them. Use ghostery? Your transaction won't go through with an unknown error. Use a VPN? Your transaction won't go through with an unknown error. Paying from a different computer? A different IP? Using a different address? All these things are a recipe for being on hold with your bank for 45 minutes when you all you wanted to do was order $50 of stuff from NewEgg.
Specifically the lack of fraud protection is obviously advantageous for merchants (who often are the ones, not the banks, paying out in the case of fraud) but for the consumer its distinctly worse.
Wrong. In many cases he is responsible.
Scenario #1: 60 days (typically) after the transaction, the customer has no recourse to report fraud. You were browsing your credit card statements and notice a $50 charge 2 months ago that you never authorized? Tough luck.
Scenario #2: When the card was physically present during the transaction, and when a pin code was used, the customer is always (edit: I meant "typically") held responsible unless he can prove he and his authorized users were definitively not present.
I think you ought to fact check on Scenario #2 (at least in the US), The merchant is responsible for confirming the identity of the customer matches the one stated on the card - the customer does not need to prove anything.
Link (re pin number use): http://www.occ.gov/static/news-issuances/memos-advisory-lett...
As for Scenario #1 - the 60 day limit is quite reasonable. What kind of investigation of unauthorized usage could a bank possibly conduct 60 days after an unauthorized $50 payment?
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force:
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal)
Note that the definition does not take into consideration whether you think the victim should have done more to protect themselves, just as the fact that every year thousands of criminals are successfully prosecuted for stealing even in cases where homeowners did not have dogs, 24x7 security guards, etc.
I'd rather have my credit card stolen, which I'm not liable for if I report it promptly, instead of just being out of the funds permanently.
My card was also stolen once (someone copied the magnetic stripe). Once this someone did a transaction on the other side of the country I immediatelly got a call from Amex which proceed to refund that transaction and to send me a new card. IIRC a replacement card arrived in the mail on the next day. In the mean time I just used my debit card to pay for things.
I have. It was pretty inconvenient, but after a call to the bank, the stolen card was cancelled and the unauthorized transactions were reversed. If your bitcoins are stolen, the money is gone forever without any possibility of recovering the funds.
> Have you ever had it frozen and not been able to spend your own money?
No, that's never happened to me. I have once had a very large transaction automatically declined in the past, which was also inconvenient at the time, but the bank called me about it within 60 seconds of the transaction and I was able to resolve the issue right there. Reflecting on it later, I decided I liked the fact that my bank sought additional verification before authorizing a very large and unusual transaction.
> Credit card fraud is incredibly rampant and the security measures in place by banks and sites is so over the top it becomes difficult to even use them.
This is not an issue for me or anyone I know. I've never had a bank card payment rejected because of ghostery or an IP address or my VPN. Besides, even if I did, there is no reason why a business could not use identical signals for rejecting a bitcoin payment, especially since the consequences of bitcoin fraud or much more severe for the consumer.
For the vast majority of consumers, bitcoin as currency, offers almost nothing in the way of advantages over bank cards; that's just the reality. This isn't to say that bitcoin is useless or that banks always have their customer's best interest at heart, but there's really no denying the fact that banks are safer and more convenient than bitcoin for most people.
At least 3 times. It didn't cost me a cent. Chase sent a new one over 2 day air.
Have you ever reversed a bitcoin charge because of a fraudulent seller?
