There was apparently nothing unusual about the $14,492 in charges put on my credit card in 48 hours at various discount supermarkets and gas stations in Hamilton, Ont.

My card was used five times at Price Chopper in two days -- $1,209.75 at the same store. Ever try to spend that much at Price Chopper? They don’t sell tobacco and the most expensive item I could find on a research visit was a pack of NicoDerm for $29.97.

But when my wife tried to charge a $4.75 latte at a Starbucks, my credit card company figured something was askew. I check my statement online every 48 hours -- to curtail purchases as much as to look for fraud -- so I was shocked when I got a call about the activity.

“Wow,” said Mike D’Sa, manager of data security and investigations with Visa Canada, when told the size of my fraud. For consumers, the size of a fraud isn’t too big of a deal because in most cases the credit card companies reimburse the cardholder. I received my reversal of charges in less than a week.

The real issue is the inconvenience. You don’t have your credit card for 48 hours, and then there are all those automatic charges to your account. I have about 10 companies I now have to contact to give them my new card number.

Visa says credit card fraud in Canada is a $407-million a year business, a number that has barely grown the last few years. It amounts to less than .01% of all credit purchases -- making it a minor cost for the credit card companies.

Publicly, the credit card industry says fraud isn’t a problem. But private studies indicate otherwise. Actimize Inc., a New York-based software company that provides solutions for fraud, conducted a survey of 113 credit-card issuers in North America and Europe and found 60% had suffered higher fraud losses over the past year. Another 80% of respondents expect a double-digit increase in losses in the current financial year, says Jasbir Anand, director of product management at Actimize.

At one point, consumers were on the hook for frauds. Then it switched to consumers paying a small deductible. But the sophistication of attacks reached a point where the credit card companies had to take on the liability or lose customers.

Since my wife and I both still had our cards in our possession, we were likely the victims of card “skimming” -- a widespread practice where information on the magnetic strip on the back of your card is copied at a terminal that has been modified. Often the retailer has no knowledge it is going on.

But I question how much retailers are doing at the point of sale -- especially in my case. One of the corner gas station kiosks put through a charge for $650. That was likely for cigarettes, according to a person in the fraud division of my credit card company. If someone is asking for 10 or so cartons of smokes, shouldn’t it set off some alarms?