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Dollar Bank customers get new cards
In all, about 1,300 cards are being re-issued this week to those customers by Dollar, which was alerted by MasterCard International Inc. in March that customers may have had their accounts stolen from a merchant's processing system.
"You are receiving this new card because MasterCard notified us that a merchant processor did not properly protect your existing debit card number," Dollar says in a letter to customers dated Aug. 3.
Jeffrey Morrow, the bank's executive vice president, said the bank did not move to re-issue cards in March because there was no evidence that any of the accounts had been compromised or misused.
But following its established policy in such cases, it has been monitoring all of the accounts potentially affected since then.
If and when there's evidence that any one of those accounts has been the subject of unusual activity, Dollar's policy is to immediately cancel cards and re-issue new ones to all members the group, he said.
"We flag those accounts and look for any kind of activity that looks odd," he said. "If it does, then we notify all of those customers who could potentially be affected."
That did happen recently, he said, when the bank's internal monitoring system discovered a transaction with one customer's account that was not appropriate.
Morrow said most of the customers affected are in Western Pennsylvania, but he could not give an exact number. Dollar will cover any customer's losses from fraud, he said.
The letter advises customers their new card has a new account number, but that their existing "PIN" -- personal identification number -- will not change.
Customers must call a toll-free number to activate the new card, after which they are advised to destroy their old card immediately.
The current problem is similar to one that affected at least 700 customers of Dollar Bank and 1,700 of Citizens Bank in July-August 2004.
Citizens customers are not affected this time, said Mike Jones, a spokesman for that company.
Bill Bostwick, senior vice president of National City Bank reported no similar problems with debit/ATM cards in recent months. National City issues MasterCard credit cards, but its debit/ATM cards are with VISA, Bostwick said.
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