FedEx FedEx allows others to bill your FedEx account with validation Internet

Long story short for the below: Don't ever leave your credit card # associated with your FedEx account, because it's incredibly easy for others to accidentally (or purposefully) use it to ship their packages.

I signed up for FedEx's online service so I could track packages coming to my house a few months back. In order to do that I had to submit a credit card to be associated with my account number.

Fast forward 7 months. My wife is combing through our credit card statement, and sees a $247.25 charge from Federal Express appear. Strange, because I haven't shipped anything that expensive. She calls FedEx and they tell her someone must have stolen our credit card and shipped 5 packages using it. She asked if there was any other way this could have happened, and they said no the card had to be stolen and used. They refund the money to us (the only good thing done here). I had her get the 5 tracking #'s and email them to me.

At this point I'm pretty irritated that I have to not only get a new credit card, but change all of my online payments that use that card (it's actually a debit card that links to my bank account, to make it even worse...). All of this takes me a day or two to get sorted.

During this period of time I decide to find out who stole my card if possible. I find the tracking numbers are sent from one business locally, to another business in Kansas. I call that business and find out who shipped the packages. This is a Friday afternoon, and nobody was available. So I call FedEx myself. In looking at my FedEx account I noticed the same credit card was associated with my account. I asked the representative on the phone if there was any possible way someone used my account number by mistake, and that's how the charges got there. The representative assured me that FedEx wouldn't allow that to happen, as the account number has to match the account name when shipping something. And that she validated it wasn't shipped using my account number, only my credit card which must have been stolen.

Come Monday I call the business back again and speak with their shipping department. They tell me their FedEx number, and two of the digits are 1 digit off of mine (mine had a 23 and theirs had a 12). Long story short, someone fat fingered the account number. According to the FedEx people I spoke with, this shouldn't have been possible.

Of course I called FedEx again today. Spoke to a supervisor named Jay in the Billing department. Jay basically told me that anyone can enter any FedEx account number they want, regardless of the name associated with it, and bill that account.

So please take this lesson to heart, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR FEDEX ACCOUNT. Otherwise, other people can charge your credit card.