A refreshing experience

[PaulM]

We all have our complaints about Amtrak, but I recently had an almost unbelievable experience. Several of my online accounts had been hacked, but it never occurred to me to check my AGR account. As I was going through my many accounts and changing the password, phone number, and user ID, if possible, I noticed that I could not log on to my Amtrak account. I called the select/select plus number. The agent found out that my email address and phone number had been changed and that about 25,000 points had been sucked out (gift cards she said). She fixed the account and reinstalled the missing points.

The point of this post is that it was almost as if the agent did this for a living day after day. No fumbling around; just action. All the other encounters with phone reps took a long time for the agent to even get to talking about my problem, and even longer to finally give up and admit this was above her/his pay grade, and put me off to someone else that wasn't much better.

 

[Dovecote]

Happy to hear you reached a pleasant outcome. Did you get the name of the agent Paul? That one is a keeper!

 

[AUAdmin]

That's great to hear some positive stories.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Losing control of my accounts is one of my worst nightmares.

I advise members to get familiar with how modern scams work so they have an idea of what to look for.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/@JimBrowning/videos

Hopefully in addition to getting your points back they were able to cancel the cards before use.

Reminder to keep credentials unique and distinct across important accounts and enable 2FA.

 

[Steel City Don]

I never had a problem except for weather delays which you can't blame Amtrak for...

 

[PaulM]

Hopefully in addition to getting your points back they were able to cancel the cards before use.

Reminder to keep credentials unique and distinct across important accounts and enable 2FA.

Of course AGR and the AGR credit cards are different. But the hacker got my AGR card as well. FNBO caught the bogus CC charges and refunded the amounts. In fact, I don't believe i've lost a penny during the whole thing, just a lot of time. But the scary thing was that about 2 weeks after FNBO send me a new card, it was hit as well. Then it was my wife's turn.

Both of your suggestions are a lot of extra effort; but I've learned my lesson.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

In fact, I don't believe i've lost a penny during the whole thing, just a lot of time.

You may not pay directly but rampant fraud is used to justify some of the highest balance & transaction fees in the OECD.

But the scary thing was that about 2 weeks after FNBO send me a new card, it was hit as well. Then it was my wife's turn.

I've had cards hacked before arriving in my mailbox. Our security is so lax that hacking has become part of everyday life. One extra task I would strongly recommend is to ask your mobile phone company what features they offer to prevent SIM card swapping.

 

[MARC Rider]

You may not pay directly but rampant fraud is used to justify some of the highest balance & transaction fees in the OECD.

They don't have problems with fraud in the other OECD countries or it's just that our greedy American banks are using it to justify the high fees?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

They don't have problems with fraud in the other OECD countries or it's just that our greedy American banks are using it to justify the high fees?

Fraud occurs everywhere but payment card fraud is far less common than it is here. Security standards like EMV are designed to reduce card fraud whereas the US standard is designed to deflect liability. The US system is so easily abused that it is also used as an intermediary for international fraud. You can steal financial details in a high-security country, buy negotiable goods in a low-security country, and launder proceeds to a high-corruption country in minutes.