An anonymous reader writes: In an time of increased Credit Card Fraud it's amazing that one of the worlds largest Car Rental Agencies has such poor Credit Card Verification technology leaving countless users open to Credit Card Fraud.
Rather than being a victim of Credit Card fraud, I discovered on June 14th that a car I booked and paid for on January 31st was charged to some other poor person's Credit Card. How did this happen? The other persons credit card was the same as mine with 2 digits (11th and 13th) swapped and the same expiry date. Sounds impossible, but not it's actually not that difficult to occur given that the Checksum is the same if numbers are swapped and Credit Cards are generally only issued for a period of up to 4 years (48 expiry periods). They blame me for user input error, I blame them for systems error.
You'd think that a company the size of Hertz would use proper verification technology. However, they only verify the Credit Card Number and Expiry Date. They don't verify against the Credit Card Owner Name or Address or CVC number. With chip and pin and more secure online technology such as "Verified By Visa" becoming increasingly common place, to combat fraud, this seems like absolute madness. They have the lowest form of online Credit Card verification.
In resolving the matter Hertz Ireland sent me an email containing all the details of the booking (including the Credit Card Number and Expiry Date). That gave me real confidence that they are protecting my data.
Hertz's answer to this. My fault of course. The poor owner of the credit card had to wait 4 months (mainly because they didn't contact me till the end of the dispute with her) for a refund and I had to make a new booking for next month. Thankfully, there was still availability of the convertible mustang I'm so looking forward to driving. ;-)