Scotiabank Security: FAIL

In this day and age of identity theft, the last thing you want to discover is that your credit card has been lost or stolen.

Fortunately, of course, if you catch it right away, you can let your bank know. Once you’ve done this, you will no longer be liable for anything charged to the card. The trick is to quickly get hold of the correct number to call.

I made an interesting accidental discovery tonight, one involving my Scotiabank Scene Visa card. This is a great little rewards card that has gotten Maya and me into more than a couple of free movies, popcorn and all. Scotiabank allowed me the option of keeping my limit at an unusually low $500, since I use this for Internet purchases. (This as opposed to the usual half-million they normally want to give me, ha ha.)

But quite by accident, I’ve discovered a serious problem with Scotiabank’s security. I wanted to report a fraudulent charge on my Visa (by OnStar, no less, which I unsubscribed to a month and a half ago), so I found a toll-free number on the back of my statement and called it.

The phone rang and rang and rang, but no one picked up. No problem, I thought, I must have dialled wrong. I hung up, checked the number, and discovered I’d accidentally dialled the number to report a lost or stolen card instead. But had I really dialled that one correctly? No one had answered.

Intrigued, I decided to call the number again, so I carefully entered it and rang. And rang. And rang. After about 30-40 rings, a recording began:

“Your party is not answering. Please hang up and call again later. We’re sorry—but your call will now be disconnected.”

I tried it again in a bit, and got the same results. Three calls, over a span of twenty minutes, not one of which was picked up.

The message here is clear: if you want a Scotiabank card, make sure you keep the limits at rock-bottom, because if your card is ever stolen, you won’t have any way of reporting it when your branch is closed. And, if the chance of fraudulent use of even a low limit card is beyond your means…you may want to look elsewhere.