Today, for instance, I received a booklet of courtesy checks at my home.  These courtesy checks are linked to a corporate credit card I maintain for my firm.  All the information regarding the account pertains to the business: firm name, address, phone number… My monthly statements go directly to the firm address, as does all communications regarding the account – rightfully so – that’s the way I set up the corporate account.

So why then would this well-known, highly publicized card issuer send unsolicited courtesy checks to my personal residence that were prepared using my name (not the firm’s name) and my personal residence address (not the firm’s address) to be drawn against my account, when I would not be expecting such checks???

A few years back we had an experience with bank fraud.  In closing a relative’s estate a savings account was opened to accumulate any funds for estate purposes.  No checks were requested or issued, and no debit card was requested.  Simply a bank account to accumulate any funds until the estate was distributed.  So how surprised were we when we received a call from the fraud unit of the bank alerting us to potentially fraudulent activity on the account using a debit card???  Turns out the bank on it’s own accord issued a debit card on the savings account, and sent it to an old address used more than twenty years ago.  The current residents of that address received a windfall when the debit card arrived out of the blue in their mail – unbeknown to us.

Seems to me that although the credit card companies complain they fall victim to fraudulent activity and suffer the losses, their own actions in some part (perhaps a large part) contribute to fraud and could have been prevented if they simply stopped sending out unsolicited information (or worse courtesy checks) to cardholders not expecting the materials.