NEVER...EVER...GIVE UP HOPE : Are You Immune to Credit Card Fraud?

Every morning, the first thing I do on the computer is to check my bank accounts. In the business account for our store, I was horrified to see a reversal of $2,300 by a credit card company. It took some time to figure out that three weeks earlier the two young men who made purchases in our store had used a fraudulent card. They spent a long time making a decision on what they purchased and chatted at length about their families.

We checked their driver licenses to be sure the name matched with the cards and the purchases went through without a hitch. Even harder to believe is one of the men stayed in contact with us via email for two weeks organizing his next purchase for a custom-made ring. Why would he give me his IP address and his name if he was scamming us? They must have known that it would take three weeks before the credit card payment would be reversed.

No time is a good time to lose $2,300, but it really couldn't have happened at a worse time. I was devastated and it was a struggle to find something positive to say about the situation. It took a day to bounce back emotionally. It made me wonder why these young men would risk jail time to make a buck when they were able-bodied and could easily find legitimate work.

I have sent copies of all the emails to the police, but I am not holding my breath. Do you know why credit card companies get rich? One reason is that they rarely, if ever, stand behind the merchant in these situations. In our case, they are saying that neither the men nor their cards were present at the time of purchase. They said the transactions came through as 'manual' which means we would have had to punch the numbers into the machine. Is this a new kind of scam? Are there credit cards out there that won't show up as being present at the point of sale? How do you fight the credit card companies when they say that? We are trying to find the footage on our in-store camera but so far.......nothing.

One positive take from this is that, in the future, for any purchases over $100 I will get a picture of ID and a picture of the credit card. This was definitely a setback but I choose to believe a bigger, legitimate sale will happen soon to make up for the loss.

Organize.....and then organize some more

As always, it has been a busy month. Keeping on top of all the obligations in running three brick and mortar businesses, bookkeeping, speaking engagements, maintaining an online business, health coaching (my favorite job), I also wrote three stories for anthologies (love those!) this month.

Each week I interview at least two guests on my show Never Ever Give Up Hope which puts any problems I think I have in perspective. I interview people who have been in a hopeless situation and came out not only a survivor but a winner. I am in awe of the strength of the human spirit when the chips are down.

And I LOVE to cook. I try to do a new recipe each week. Some work....some yuck! We had a couple dinner parties this month and I made this Strawberry Devonshire Tart I had not made in twenty years. I forgot how good it was (and easy). It has a shortbread crust which makes it even yummier!

I marinated the ribs all day, then baked them at a low temperature until they were perfect. Hubby put them on the grill and got busy chatting with the boys.......guess what? He forgot about the ribs. We all had a good laugh, scraped as much of the char off as we could and remarkably enough -- they were really good!

And no month is complete without pictures of the grands. My two-year-old looks like a teenager in this picture. She will be a beautiful one and I bet her big brother puts her on a leash!