Quote:
Originally Posted by robj144
You have to be careful with debit cards and I would advise not to use one at all. If your debit card gets stolen or hacked, they draw directly from your bank account without any buffer. Credit cards have fraud alerts and won't hit you at all if you get it right away.
A long time ago, someone hacked a department store near me. I used a debit card there and someone got my debit card and pin number and made duplicates. They were using them all over the world and withdrew thousands of dollars straight out of my bank account. I had to go to the bank and it was a major PITA, but I eventually got all my money back after some time.
I literally have never used a debit card since... literally as in it was more than 10 years ago and I've never once used it for a transaction in that time. Always a credit card for that and to get points.
|
About 90% of the time I use my debit card via Apple Pay - nobody including the merchant ever sees the card number. In the past I used it a lot and over the many years I used it I had a couple instances of fraud that between the bank and I was cleared up very quickly. I know there are possibilities for problems, but my experience tells me they're very infrequent and the banks are getting much much better at fraud prevention these days.
For large purchases and almost any online purchases I tend to use the credit card specifically because of the protections it offers and because I make some tiny amount of money by putting larger charges on that and paying off my bill every month. I get all of the complaints about credit cards but they're in wide use and me never using them isn't gonna make the problems and potential problems go away. I mean, the world would be a lot better off if we all stopped driving and using air conditioning too, but at a certain point complaining about the systemic evils of credit cards is a bit of tilting at windmills.
-Ray