Happier Abroad Forum Community

Not sure which forum it was but on the credit card charges i can remember when some hotels want to see your credit card for id. I would strickly pay cash. Because i can remember when i was at the cherryblossoms hotel in manilla and guess what i started getting charges everywhere on the
card they used as id for breakfeast for vitamins etc. I confronted the hotel and they still denied it when it was a clear record on my laptop of the charges.
I think some of the hotel clerks have sticky fingers or know someone else who does. never show them your credit card numbers.

Did you contact your credit card company's fraud department? The same thing happened to me. I posted about it on another thread.

I recently ordered some used books online on two separate occasions and both times my card number was stolen. The first time they charged about $1000 worth of iphone stuff and the second time they charged a subscription to an online game. I'm assuming someone who is taking the orders are stealing numbers. I got the funds refunded but it's annoying cause I have to keep getting issues a new card and I have to wait for my father to mail it too me, cause I don't trust sending it regular mail. So I have him hide it in one of the books he sends over. I guess people are getting more desperate but whats funny they are stealing to pay for worthless entertainment crap, not real tangibles. So I've replaced two credit card numbers in a span of three months.

Which website stole your credit card numbers? Did you report it to the management of that site? Did they nail the bastard?

If you use American Express, they will FedEx your new card to you safely.

The best deals on books are from Half.com, where you can get great books for a few dollars. But it sucks that they don't ship overseas. Amazon.com is pricier but they do ship overseas. Half.com even beats Amazon.com's "used book" prices too.

I usually use sites like this to compare prices: http://www.allbookstores.com/

These two stores also have cheap prices but aren't always listed on the above site:

http://www.a1books.com
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

I use half.com a lot also but their shipping charges are skewed and sometimes I'll just go directly to the sellers website and get a better shipping rate, same as Amazon.

I usually have the books sent to my fathers house then he bundles together 4-6 of them in one box and labels the box well under $50 to avoid the tax the Philippine postal service charges on incoming mail.

Half.com ships at media rate, which is around $2, the cheapest rate ever! How can you beat that?

Which site stole your credit card numbers? Did they catch him? How did their customer service respond to it?

Standard rate is $3.49 with Half and $3.99 with Amazon. Other companies vary but usually are 2.99 or cheaper. Better world books has free shipping in USA and only $3.97 worldwide. But what pisses me off with Amazon and Half is they just have one flat shipping rate even though media rate shipping is often cheaper. Thus, they are making money off of charging extra on shipping. I ordered a book from better world books off of Half and didn't realize it was cheaper on their site till I had placed the order. If I had ordered directly from BWB's, I would have saved $3.49. That's why I price compare cause usually I can find multiple prices for the same book on different book selling sites.

I just tend to use Half sometimes cause I can just purchase all at once with one credit card rather then charging multiple times for smaller purchases. Unless there is a major price difference I'll try to order from the same source.

I'm not sure which stores stole my number but one of them used Yahoo stores and I know it was stolen from there. The second time I'm not so sure cause bought multiple books from 4-5 different stores. The credit card companies usually don't follow up on it cause it costs more to do research on it than it is to just credit back the account. I think it has to be a lot of money stolen for them to research it.