My Money Mistake is a weekly PiggyVest series that explores the worst money mistakes real Nigerians have made, and the lessons they learnt from it.

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For this week’s episode of My Money Mistake, we spoke to a lecturer whose card got compromised on a random e-learning website. He tells us about how that happened, how he was able to minimise his loss, and what he learnt from that experience.

Could you tell me about your money mistake?

A while back, I saw an advert for an online course in digital marketing. I was interested in taking the course, so I registered and paid with my debit card. 

Everything went well, and at the end of the course, I was asked to pay for the certificate, and I did. I thought that was the end of it, but the following day, I was debited again.

By the same company?

Yes, It happened around 1am/2am. I didn’t register for anything, and I was already done with the course, so I was shocked. I sent them emails and tried to speak with their customer support personnels. 

I was unable to reach them, and I thought that was the end of it, but the next day, at about the same time, I was debited again.

Oh wow.

Yes, that was when I knew I had a problem. That same day, I went to my bank and blocked my card. I haven’t even gotten another debit card for that account. I lost almost ₦‎50k. 

That’s tough. 

It was. I think I was also lucky that they didn’t deduct all my money at once. I spoke to several other people about my experience, and I heard it happens often and they usually remove all the amount on the account. 

I only feel better about it now because I eventually used the knowledge from the course to get some contracts that paid me way more than I lost from the constant debits. I’ve made the money back, so it felt like the mistake was one of those things I had to learn to be wiser about money. 

It was after the experience I even learned that many other sites offer the same course for free. 

Congratulations on the contract. What did you learn from the experience?

After my experience, I spoke to a few people and I heard it happens a lot. Now, I don’t use my debit card details on random websites anymore, even shopping websites. I can’t do that again.