This has happened to me twice, now. The first time it happened, my husband handled the details and I learned about it only after the fact. And have to live with a higher interest rate on a credit card.

The second time, I was home and heard the whole conversation (my husband uses a speaker phone). Forewarned, I'll take care of the problem right away.

This is the scenario. The credit card company representative calls, says someone has been trying to access your account. Wants to verify and change password. Which of course we won't do, because we know about the scams which are all too common.

Company rep then says he will cancel the account and issue a new card. The card will arrive in the mail (which it does) and we can set up a new password.

What he doesn't tell you is that the payment due date gets changed, and is so close to the arrival of the new card that you will likely miss the payment, unless you call and make a telephone payment. For which there is a substantial fee.

Unless you ask to speak to a supervisor and demand that the fee be waived, because of the whole change of date and issuance date thing.

Then you have to go through the hassle of changing your records (I keep a financial spreadsheet), going online and making a new user name and password (I have a notebook where I keep user names and passwords).

Twice sounds like a pattern to me. When I asked why I couldn't have the same payment cycle date, they said sure, I could but I'd have to make one payment on the immediate date and then another on the re-instituted date. So I'd have to make two payments in the same month.

With all this change, it's a pain. And I'll bet they get lots of late payments (with jacked-up interest rates) because people don't follow through immediately upon receipt of the new cards. That's what happened with the first one.

Oh, and I had to go into the old account online and verify it was closed. PITA.

Yes, I keep a notebook with account names and passwords: for household accounts (credit card, gas company, etc., that I pay online, work accounts (several different databases with corresponding user names and passwords), not to mention user names and passwords for different journal databases (LiveJournal, WordPress, JournalScape, etc., so that I can leave comments on friends' blogs).

All of my usernames and passwords are variations on one of three themes (different programs have different requirements for what is acceptable for a password), and I could probably puzzle out one if I forgot it. BUT many programs lock you out after three tries and make you contact the sysadmin. So the notebook, closely guarded, is my low tech backup.

How do you keep track of all your usernames and passwords?