Card Theft...

I fairly recently had a spat of fraudulent charges applied against my bank card.  (Heh.)

No big deal for me.  No big deal for my bank.

Pretty big fuckin' deal for the companies involved.

Now, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for these particular companies, because a small amount of research indicates that an employee was breaking the rules, and was probably in on it - they didn't have my card, and input the numbers manually.

(Judging by how some of the charges played out, I suspect they ran random card numbers using stolen point of sale info from a third party until they found some that worked.  Interesting approach, and hard to catch.)

But in general, I do.  The banks/credit card companies basically file the charges as fraudulent and deny the seller the money.  End of story.  It's up to the seller to recoup the costs lost in merchandise.  The banks don't research or pursue it; they have no reason to.  Police forces basically ignore it; a family member had their card info stolen, pursued it vigorously by going to the stores things were purchased at, GOT VIDEO FOOTAGE WITH THE THIEF PURCHASING GOODS WITH THE STOLEN CARD, and the police STILL refused to pursue the case.

And that's not that uncommon.

Vendors are footing the primary bill for credit card fraud.  Consumers foot a secondary bill in the form of shitty credit for years thereafter.

I'm not really sure of a solution.  The situation just irritates me.

(The stolen card info irritated me too, incidentally, and is causing no end of trouble as I get all my billing sorted back out, but the stolen money is taken care of on my end, I didn't lose anything beyond the time necessary to change my billing info for everything over.)