Last night on the way home from dinner, I got a text from Capital One:
“A charge of hold for $106.78 on November 5, 2025, was placed on your Venture Card (****) at Zara.com. Standard carrier charges apply.”
Thankfully, Mandy was driving. I asked her what Zara is and if she had bought anything there.
Nope.
Before I could click into my account to lock the card and dispute the charge, I got another text from Capital one. This time they were asking if I made that purchase and if I would approve it. I clicked “NO” and proceeded to go through the process of locking the card, disputing the charge, and ordering a new card.
But wait. There is more.
By the time I could click a few buttons to get into my account, 5 more charges of a similar amount came through. And by then, a few had declined. Clearly Capital One’s internal algorithms had noticed the funny business and stopped everything.
In the end, over $550 worth of fraud was prevented inside of 10 minutes. Imagine if I didn’t have the text alerts.
Well, I can.
A few years ago, while on a vacation, I had over 60 charges hit my AMEX over a weekend. I didn’t realize it until I got back the following week and happened to look at my account. Of course, AMEX fixed everything, but I learned a lesson:
If you don’t already have text alerts enabled for all of your cards and bank accounts, I would HIGHLY recommend it.
It could save you some money, time, and frustration.