Consumerist: Airport Payphone Charges $20 For 1-Minute Local Call

I received a notice recently that one of my credit cards had been compromised in an online transaction in which Verisign provided the alleged security/verification for the merchant. Terribly sorry, said Verisign, which did offer (I accepted) to pay for a year of credit watching via one of the three major credit bureaus.

Since then, however, I’ve had several of purchases rejected by the card issuer. At least twice now, I’ve had to call the credit-card company and verify that, yes, I was the person making the purchase. Then the issuer unfroze the card, and I could try again to make the purchase.

When this happened earlier this week, I asked the person at the other end of line to simply cancel that card and issue me a new one with a different number. She refused, on the ground that since there was no actual fraud, there was no harm being done and therefore no need for the time and expense — to the company — of issuing the new card.

What about my time and expense? These calls to the card company are taking up time that is worth something to me. That, of course, is irrelevant to the card issuer.

Just one more hidden cost of credit in today’s world.