Credit card fraud avoided

My wife, Judy, and I took a cruise in May 2015 from Rotterdam, Netherlands, to the Canary Islands and back on a Holland America Line (877/932-4259, www.hollandamerica.com) liner. The cruise was fine, with wonderful service and food, and took us to places we’d never been before. 

On one shore excursion, midway between Casablanca and Marrakesh, our bus stopped at a gas station and convenience store. Judy left her small coin purse in the ladies’ room there, but we were miles down the highway before she discovered the loss. 

She had been carrying a credit card and the equivalent of $45 in cash. We figured the cash was a windfall for the person who found the purse, but what to do about the card?

It was a World Elite MasterCard, issued by Citibank, with a $50 liability limit. The bank has always given us wonderful service. Our companions were insistent that we needed to call the bank at the first opportunity, but I hesitated because it was the only card we had with us that contained a chip — something not all cards had at the time.

I wanted to be able to use my card, as the other credit cards we carried didn’t have chips and might not be usable in Europe. I decided to risk the $50.

As it happened, when we returned to Rotterdam, Judy fell on an escalator in the train station and injured her leg. Both the ambulance company and the hospital would take payment by MasterCard… if it had a chip. I was glad I hadn’t canceled the card!

After we returned home, I received a call from Citibank’s fraud department asking if we had charged the equivalent of $51 in petrol the previous week in Morocco. I said that we had not. The attendant thought not, as the driver of the truck evidently did not look like a Judy Thorson.

The bank had turned down the purchase, canceled the card and was sending me a new one by overnight mail. No harm done!

JAMES A. THORSON

Buffalo Grove, IL