Word: credit-card
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Most telemarketing crooks insist on payment by credit card. Reason: the vouchers can be cashed in at banks before the buyers have second thoughts. Moreover, purloined credit-card numbers enable con artists to compound the crime -- for example, by charging victims several times for the products they purchase over the phone. By the time the consumers receive a bill, the thieves have disappeared, often without shipping any products...
...this con, excited consumers who call to claim prizes after receiving you-are-a-winner letters are asked for their credit-card numbers and card-expiration dates "as verification." The new car or microwave oven never arrives. But before long, mysterious charges begin to show up on the cards. Joel Lisker, MasterCard's vice president for security and fraud control, & estimates that thieves using such methods skimmed at least $105 million from the $120 billion in U.S. credit-card transactions last year...
Access to high-quality telephone service will be as important to a community in the coming century as the railroads were in the last. Clay Center, because of its inexpensive real estate and literate work force, might be an ideal spot for a credit-card processing center or other "electronic cottage." Unfortunately, Clay Center's phone service, provided by Southwestern Bell, is so antiquated that hookups with international computer networks are impossible...
...loss of revenue from one of their most expensive options: collision insurance. Until recently many car-rental customers paid as much as $13 a day for so-called collision-damage waivers to protect themselves against liability for any repair costs in case their vehicles were damaged. But many major credit-card companies now offer such coverage to their cardholders at no cost whenever they charge a rental. As a result, more and more consumers decline the pricey waivers. In the most sweeping move so far, American Express began offering the collision coverage last week to its more than 11 million...
...growing resentment against CDWs created a marketing opportunity for credit-card firms, which concluded that such coverage would be so inexpensive that they could offer it free. (The credit-card coverage is typically supplement insurance, which pays damages if other policies cannot be tapped.) American Express began providing the coverage in November 1987 to its gold- and platinum-card holders. Last year MasterCard and Visa did the same for their premium customers, but they have not yet done so for regular cardholders...