When you are a credit geek like me and my fellow Creditbloggers, everyone tells you their credit stories. I don&39;t mind, really. If nothing else it gives me great fodder for this blog. Here are just a few I’ve heard this year:

1. At New Years Eve, a friend told me that he had twice received a $100 Home Depot gift card from his son. Both times he got to the store and was told the cards were never activated and were worthless. Because his son did not save the receipts, he was unable to get anything for the $200 he spent.

Lesson: If you purchase a gift card, keep the receipt and tell the recipient you have the receipt if there is a problem. Or call the toll-free number listed on the card when you buy it to verify the balance.

2. Recently I was talking to a friend who works with several websites. She told me that one of her clients is finding suspicious purchases in her shopping cart, some to the tune of $5000. That might not be weird if the client were selling jewelry or electronics, but she&39;s a business coach and the large purchases are for telephone coaching which, presumably, the thief will never take advantage of (as needed as those services may be).

Lesson: If you see a suspicious charge on your credit card, immediately contact the company providing the service to try to ascertain if it is legitimate and if not, please remember to follow the billing dispute rules by putting your dispute in writing to your card issuer, right away. Remember calling does not protect your rights. 

3.  One of the supposed benefits of a Costco credit card is that you can use to to rent a car through Alamo and avoid the fee for an additional driver. My father is a cardholder and used it to rent a car on his trip to Florida to visit me. But at the car rental counter, he was told he had to pay the additional driver fee to add my sister as a driver (at $10 a day!) because he didn&39;t use the proper code when booking the reservation online. This, despite the fact that he called Alamo before making the reservation through Priceline, confirmed the benefit and was was not told anything about this secret special code. At the airport, with a huge line forming behind her, my sister tried going up the chain of supervisors, only to finally give up in frustration. Anyone else have this problem?

Lesson: Don&39;t count on Alamo to give you the promised Costco card benefit! (I hope Alamo will see the light and fix this one.)

4. Last but not least is my recent credit card pitch in the sky. Returning home from a business trip last month, my US Airways flight was canceled. I spent hours on the phone trying to rebook a halfway decent flight the next day. I finally boarded my flight, settled in, and wearily begin to doze off as the plane rumbled down the jetway. As the flight attendant wrapped up his safety monologue, I was jarred awake when he launched into a full scale commercial for the US Airways Visa Signature Credit Card.

This was no mere mention of the credit card, but a well-crafted, smoothly delivered, very long commercial enticing us to sign up today for the credit card and get enough miles for a free ticket with our first purchase(!) and two yearlong companion passes for $99(!) and 500 bonus miles if we filled out the application right away and gave it to the flight attendant during that same flight (!). I&39;ll give the flight attendant credit, he made it sound like the perfect credit card. And we certainly were a targeted, captive audience. But should I be subjected to that pitch on a flight I paid for?

Lesson: Credit card marketing follows us everywhere. Which keeps giving us credit geeks something to write about.