When Amy Bailey started getting bills in the mail in the fall of 2016 for various retail credit cards — J. Crew, The Limited, Victoria’s Secret and Macy’s — with thousands of dollars in purchases she didn’t make, she was confused. Puzzled, the Kentucky resident checked her wallet; she still had the cards, they hadn’t been lost or stolen, yet someone had clearly compromised them.
“I was wondering when she went to Chicago and charged all this stuff,” said James, Amy’s husband, half joking.
Amy relied on James to figure out how her identity had been stolen and to fix the damage.
It was a daunting task, he says, one that took an inordinate amount of time.
“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent on the phone,” James said. “It’s a maze to get to anyone and then they’ll say ‘oh, you have the wrong number.’ It goes on and on and on. I can’t even count the hours I spent on hold or waiting for someone to answer a call. I’d spend a whole day just trying to run one of them down — Macy’s or The Limited.”
So how was someone able to charge things to Amy’s card without actually having the cards in hand?
“There are several theories, but (the criminals) can go into a store, say ‘there’s a bunch of things I want to get but I forgot my card,’” James said. “They had all of her information — her Social Security number, phone, address, which allowed the store to verify that the person there could actually make the purchase. That was everyone’s guess as to what happened. I’m sure at some places they had requirements for photo ID, but they probably just had something made with their photo and my wife’s name on it.”
James had done the majority of the work himself when he figured out he had LibertyID benefits, something he’d forgotten about.
“(LibertyID) monitored her credit and made sure there wasn’t anything else that needed to be fixed,” James said. “They gave us a sense of security in that they do this professionally and I was just flying blind and just doing the best I could with what I had. They gave us a sense of security based on their professionalism and the way they stayed in contact with us.”
James also worried that his identity might be compromised next, he said, and knowing that LibertyID could jump in and fix any damage and that he wouldn’t have to waste hours on the phone trying to repair the damage was super reassuring.
“The good thing about LibertyID is they know who to call the first time in order to get in touch with the people who can fix it,” James said. “And they do it for you. It was devastating the countless hours I spent on hold or waiting for someone to answer a call.”
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