Canthook

As much as the mainstream media talks about insecure websites, it's actually ten times as common that people steal from sites rather than sites steal from people.

My wife and I went to the Olive Garden several years ago, and "broke in" a new card, just to make sure it was working, then I stuck it in my wallet and forgot about it - until suddenly, a month later, someone made a $10 contribution to the Red Cross, followed by a $75 purchase at a gas pump a couple of days later, then purchases at WalMart and another retailer for about $400-500 each, the day after that.

All these purchases were made in Oregon. I made a 24-hour trip to Mountain View, California in 1994, but other than that, I haven't been even as far west as Denver since 1956.

It had to be the waitress at Olive Garden. They take your credit card, and disappear into the back, then return with your card and a slip to sign. It turns out that she only worked at Olive Garden that one day, for three hours, she never returned to get her paycheck and on that one day, she stole five credit card numbers.

The loss prevention officer at the bank told me that nine times out of ten, it's not a website that steals your card number, it's someone you physically hand your card to - and they are able to get the security code off the back of your card that way, too.

Usually, they make a fake duplicate of your card, rather than order stuff online, because too many criminals get arrested when UPS delivers the merchandise. They're careful to choose busy locations without security cameras. Less-busy locations might remember faces. Security cameras definitely can remember faces.

Never let the card get out of your sight. The Visa and MasterCard regulations now require that sales slips NOT be imprinted with your complete card number, so they can't get your number once you've left by rummaging through the till.

He also suggested that you might want to record your CVV number - that's the security code imprinted on the back of your card - and then put a sticker over that number so that nobody can read the number without making it very evident. That's only used in card-not-present transactions, so it's a relatively minor thing, but sometimes card numbers are stolen by kids who buy memberships at porn sites, etc., online. (If you obliterate that number, or scratch it off, some merchants might be reluctant to accept your card, but covering the number with a sticker shouldn't be a problem; you can always remove the sticker if a merchant balks, and then cover it up again immediately afterwards.)

I hope your boss has better luck in the future. Since nobody else has reported a stolen CC number or identity theft to us, in connection with a pet nail trimmer purchase, I suspect that it was someone else who scammed your boss, possibly someone she did business with weeks before.

She's lucky the bank froze her accounts. Yeah, it was a nuisance, but not nearly as great a nuisance as if someone had run up $30,000 of bills on her card!

We don't have any information that isn't posted on the site already.

Telebrands spams me every couple of weeks, but if you reply to the email address, nothing happens. There are phone numbers on various sites, but they are answered by machines, not by people.

I recommend you contact your state Attorney General. You can find his website by googling for "state attrney general mississippi" or "state attrney general north dakota" or whatever your state is. You'll probably be able to fill out a form online, which will result in them mailing you a complaint form, which you have to fill out and return by mail. (It's not a very good way to do things, I agree, but government isn't very good at figuring out great ways to do things.)

If you paid by credit card, what you need to do is to contest the charge. You need to do this in writing; there should be instructions on the back of your bill. If you paid by debit card, rather than by credit card the procedure is the same, but you have fewer legal rights. (Insert another complaint about stupid government here.) Visa and MasterCard both advertise that if you lose money buying online, they will make it good, but that's not quite true.

In the meanwhile, you don't have the PediPaws, and you wanted something to solve that problem. The Dremel tool for the purpose is pretty nice. Among other things, it's two-speed, and you can buy refills for the sanding drum locally. It's cordless, which is a plus; it's not necessarily easy to get a pet's paw close to a power outlet. It's also less expensive than PediPaws.

I've included a link so you can go to Amazon to buy the Dremel pet nail tool. One of the nice things about buying on Amazon is that you know that they will take good care of you as a customer, even if you buy from an Amazon associate. Seems like half the time when you buy on eBay, the vendor is a crook, but on Amazon, you give your money to Amazon, not directly to the associate, and crooks aren't interested in a deal like that.

I don't know that there are any problems with the Pedi Paws product. My objection (and that of others) is mostly that it's being sold by a company you wouldn't want to do business with.

And if you're as stressed out by the economy as most of us, you might look at this as a business opportunity. The minimum order quantity is 1000, but the price is 3.85 FOB Ningbo. By the time you have 10 boxes, each weighing 35 pounds, shipped to the US, you're probably talking about $5,000, not $3,850.

You could sell them to pet shops. They'd probably go flying off the racks there. Or you could sell them online.

I found, when selling online, that there are people who prefer to buy from a website, rather than give their credit card number to a person who might steal it. There are other people who prefer to talk to a real, live person, rather than give their credit card number to a website which might steal it. I'd recommend you set up a website that sells the product, payable through a trusted third party (PayPal, for instance), and mention that customers can phone in their orders to you. Make the website look personal and friendly, rather than slick and anonymous, and it will help. Mention that you, the owner of the company, are the one who answers the phone during the hours of X to Y daily, and that they don't want to call during other hours.

Get yourself a Vonage account for the phone, so you don't pay business rates for your personal phone. You can set it up on Vonage so that calls to your vonage number simultaneously ring your house phone or your cellphone (or both). If you can take calls on your cellphone that way, it means you aren't tied down, babysitting the phone.

You'll want to have an account so that you can take credit cards over the phone. Talk to your local banker, as well as to the outfits hawking merchant accounts online, and look at PayPal's solution. Sometimes, your local banker offers the best deal.

I don't think a price of $20 is outrageous, and nobody will complain if you charge $5 for shipping and handling. The other outfits charge $2 extra for delivering to a residence rather than a business, so the post office is the only way to go. If you ship via priority mail, it doesn't cost much more than parcel post. Priority mail gives you free boxes to ship in, and gives you a free tracking number if you get your postage online. (You don't need to go with stamps.com or endicia, both of which charge a monthly fee. You can go to the postoffice website, pay for your postage with your credit card as you need it, and print out the postage on your printer. It's nice to use the full-page stickers to print on, but they're expensive. Another option is to print on regular paper. You can use an inkjet printer, if you use clear packaging tape to cover the label; otherwise, the ink will smear if it gets wet. Laser printers don't have that problem and they are cheaper to operate.

Let us know if you decide to deal in Pedi Paws. There are a lot of people who visit this site just for the Pedi Paws content.

This comment was sent by email, rather than through the website feedback form on the site.

It was posted from lvlv ([68.62.233.40]), which is a Comcast IP in Lake County, Florida, but it had a forged return address of "[email protected]". Lake County is Tavares, halfway between Ocala and Orlando.

You will note that I wrote about "Pedi Paws" and the guy writing this is talking about "Pedi Cure". Another product advertised on TV is "Peticure". It's not clear which product this guy is talking about.

They used to advertise dogs in comic books, back in the 1950s, that were small enough to fit in a coffee cup. If you have one of those dogs, the Peticure would be OK - but the web page for the Peticure say it's intended for cats and for dogs that weigh less than 15 pounds. That's pretty small; I've known of cats that weighed 20 pounds.

And the Peticure costs $37.90, by the time you pay S&H. A third product being hawked is the "Perfect Paws" which is $29.90, by the time you pay S&H. Buying the Dremel product with the link above is $21.80, and S&H is free if you spend a total of $25 at Amazon.

Does Dremel make the Pedi Cure? No. Pedi Cure is made by "Ninghai HG Electric Factory". It's a 3.6 volt product, while the Dremel pet nail tool is 6 volt.

Just to make things clear, I have no connection with Dremel, except for being a consumer of their products for about 40 years. And my relationship with Amazon is primarily as a customer, although I'm about to list a lot of my used CDs for sale there. My initial thought was that this letter came from someone who owned stock in or worked at either Telebrands or the importing company, but the more I consider how little the guy knows, the more it appears that he's just a teenaged troll with too much time on his hands. We really need to do something about child labor laws...

I used my PayPal debit card to order. After it became apparent that they were completely in the weeds at best, and engaged in identity theft at worst, I drained that account to just a couple of dollars. (My wife is very good at draining accounts; she can do it without blinking, it seems.)

I got a letter in the mail today from Telebrands saying that they were unable to charge my account, and asking me to order again, using another payment method.

Several days ago, I got a phone call from Telebrands, trying to sell me more stuff. I explained that I had such a terrible time trying to do business with them, and that I didn't want to buy anything from them, and that I wanted to cancel any outstanding orders with them, and the lady - yes, she seemed to be a lady, other than for the fact that she was making an unsolicited sales call to me while I was eating supper - said she couldn't assist me with that.

Why is it that unsolicited telemarketing calls always seem to come at supper time? It's not that I am missing calls at other times; I only give out my Vonage phone number, and it's set up to simulring my cell phone, so that on the rare occasions that I'm not home, I can still answer phone calls on my cellphone instead. Do telemarketing people all work part-time, during supper time?