I will never pay for anything on a flight again ever.
October 3, 2012 10:53 AM   Subscribe

I lost my wallet on an airplane for 24 hours. I started the process of cancelling accounts but it was just recovered. Should I cancel my cards and bank account anyway?

Yesterday I left my wallet on a flight from Boston to LA. When I went to get into my shuttle to go home, I realized my wallet was missing.

I spoke with the customer service staff as soon as I realized it was missing. He has the plane checked and they had no luck. It was heading right back to Boston and he said they would check again when they did a "deep cleaning," but gave me a long list of reasons as to why I may be out of luck.

Since they had checked it more than once, I figured it was better to be safe. To protect myself, I immediately went to my bank and had my old account closed, my money moved and my cards cancelled. I had checks in the wallet, so my account number was also compromised. However, this morning I was alerted that my wallet was indeed found and will be fedex'd to me overnight.

Now my question is - what should I do? my bank left my account open for 24 hours with no money in it just in case I missed a transaction or two. Should I move forward with the new account or cancel everything as planned? It's a huge pain to reroute everything but I have no idea who, if anyone, had my wallet and what information they may have noted. Thoughts?
posted by amycup to Work & Money (9 answers total)
 
If you're half-way through the process, just keep going.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 10:55 AM on October 3, 2012 [2 favorites]


I doubt your bank will allow you to undo the cancellation now. I would proceed as planned.
posted by grouse at 10:59 AM on October 3, 2012


No credit card company will let you undo a cancellation. You pull that trigger, it's done.
posted by mhoye at 11:09 AM on October 3, 2012


Best answer: Absolutely maintain as though you had lost it forever. You have no idea what the chain of custody was, so there's no guarantee that somebody didn't take down all your info before it was handed back.
posted by General Malaise at 11:37 AM on October 3, 2012 [3 favorites]


Your security was compromised, and that's reason enough to move forward.
posted by DoubleLune at 12:11 PM on October 3, 2012


Apparently contrarian view here: If you can stop the process and it's not too late, and the bank and credit card companies are not against you doing that in the circumstances under which you lost your wallet, then I wouldn't bother with the cancellation. Credit card companies have very sophisticated fraud detection algorithms, and your liability with credit card fraud s very minimal, and just knowing your bank account number is probably not enough information for anyone to do anything sinister.
posted by Dansaman at 12:33 PM on October 3, 2012


Anti-contrarian view here: There's plenty of sinister that could be done with the information on your checks. You've probably seen sites that will take payment via a checking account number.

OTOH, if someone wanted your bank info they probably wouldn't have bothered to turn in the wallet. You don't mention if any cash was still in the wallet, but if it's still there I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that no one with intent to steal from you was in there.

I'm guessing you have some automatic deposits and payments set up under the old account. If your bank will let you, keep it -- but you should get the new account too. Keep just enough in the old account to cover any scheduled payments, and watch it like a hawk.
posted by yohko at 3:14 PM on October 3, 2012


I've "lost" cards and then found them in my bag, etc. When that happens I continue the cancellation; never hurts to freshen up your CC numbers with so much CC number theft around online and in RL.
Cut up the old card of course.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 3:23 PM on October 3, 2012


Response by poster: Thanks for the advice! To add to this a bit, the bank account is still open for the time being but empty - I'm going to move forward with cancelling everything though. Better safe than sorry!
posted by amycup at 3:57 PM on October 3, 2012


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