It's not an exaggeration to say that Amazon is our first port of call for most non-food things. The Amazon Prime concept appeared more than a year ago, and the option tick box was placed where - previously - folk had indicated they wanted free "super saver" delivery, so ticking the A Prime box in error was simple to do. After quite a bit of moaning by customers, they eventually moved it, but - as Rob says - it's still easy to tick by mistake.
On bank cards, we've had our credit card details stolen twice. Embarrassingly, the second time was when Everest were fitting our new double glazing, and we were waiting to pay the balance by CC. The bank rang us about an hour before the Everest chaps had finished to say they were suspicious and had we really ordered £1200.00's worth of vitamin tablets? They cancelled the cards but - because we've always made sure we both carry a non-joint card for precisely this sort of problem - it was just a bit inconvenient.
We had a long natter with the CC people who told us our card had been cloned by someone at an online retailer. However, this is the reason why it's often quite difficult to get things sent to an address other than your own.
Since then the Verified by Visa system has become almost mandatory, and that's had the effect of cutting card fraud like that down a lot. It's still worth bearing in mind that most fraud is committed by employees of companies that have access to your details, which is why Verified by Visa has enjoyed quite a bit of success. By splitting any transaction across two discrete bodies or companies, it would require a fairly ingenious fraudster to be in both places at once. or someone daft enough to leave their details with their credit card. Of course, this in itself brings problems for older folk whose memories are not what they once were.
