[steveBK123]

> All the stolen money was restored within a few days. It was not a big deal.

You just agreed with my premise but that in your case the dollar amount was low enough to be inconsequential. If someone ran up $5k of charges on your card right before you needed to pay rent/mortgage/whatever, this would have been far more annoying.

Also - credit card protects you from this scenario, for free, or in fact pays you money with any of the cash back cards.

[marssaxman]

The $300 I mentioned was just walking-around money, meant to get me by while they investigated. I don't remember the exact amount that was stolen, but it was not far below your hypothetical $5k. The fraud was inconsequential not because it involved a small amount of money, but because the credit union took care of it promptly, with minimal fuss.

> credit card protects you from this scenario, for free

Sure, but using a debit card issued by my credit union also protects me from this scenario for free, with no risk of getting in debt or having to pay interest. That feels safer to me: fraud is rare, but debt is common, so I'd rather protect myself against debt.