Not All Credit Card Abuse Is Gambling

Not all credit card abuse is gambling. A woman’s 12 year old son ran up a total of more than £900 in bills using his savings account and her credit card on, of all things, Face Book’s Farmville game. The tab on her credit card eventually ended up being £625. This was all done without the woman’s knowledge between March 14^th when the first charge was made and the 29^th when she discovered the usage and stopped the card.

Face Book and the game’s creator Zynga, refused to refund her money because her son lives in her house. The credit card company, HSBC, also refuses to help her unless she reports her son to the police.

A HSBC spokeswoman stated that if the card had been used on a gambling site, it would have set off warnings for “unusual usage”. But since it was used instead, to buy Face Book’s Farmville virtual coins for use in the game, no alarms were triggered.

Nothing was deemed to be suspicious by HSBC while £625 was spent in just two weeks by someone who’s name is not on the card.

Something just seems a little off when you can’t use your own credit card to play a few minutes of poker to have fun and relax, but someone else can use your card to buy almost anything they want, as long as it’s not on a “gambling” site. Go figure!