Gah! Bank stopped payment on xmas presents cos we "never usually spend much money"

gallygirl · 17 December 2007 at 7:52PM

Last Jan my debit card payment on my credit card was rejected. When I phoned up to ask why it was because it was a lot LESS than usual - normally it was around £1,500 (before I got company credit card!), last Jan it was around £300 (no work expenses and I'd been so paranoid about spending too much I'd paid for Xmas with cash!)

nice to know they're looking after me.....:rolleyes:

BettiePage · 17 December 2007 at 7:59PM

southernscouser wrote: »

What does that mean?

My bank couldn't care less! :rotfl: I've probably had transactions totaling about £200,000 coming in and out of my account via bookies this year and they've not said a thing! :rolleyes:

For f*x sake

ZTD · 17 December 2007 at 8:14PM

Broken_hearted wrote: »

The bank should have called you first but at least they were trying to protect you.

You don't pay for fraudulent transactions from your account. The bank was trying to protect itself.

Lemon_Tree · 17 December 2007 at 9:07PM

i remember when i went on hol to Aus, i phoned my bank to say dont' worry if you see transactions from there and they said, 'oh don't worry about telling us, we won't put it on your records'
they are very good at being selective about when they tell you things they've cancelled but guess it's better than fraudulent transactons going through

MarkyMarkD · 17 December 2007 at 9:31PM

There are two points here:

- the online retailer should have online authorised the transaction, and declined it immediately. The fact that they don't do this means that THEY are mainly responsible for you not knowing the transaction hadn't gone through*; and
- your bank should have contacted you immediately if they believed the transaction was fraudulent.

* although many retailers don't authorise transactions until despatch - but that doesn't make it the right way to do things IMHO.

Let me illustrate best practice with a real life example (and no, I don't work for Egg).

I attempted to book a hotel in Spain online using Hotelopia - a Spanish registered Internet site - using my Egg card. Not unreasonably, Egg thought this transaction might be dodgy so they blocked it. Hotelopia told me it had been declined.

After trying once more, I phoned Egg to ask why it was being rejected. They explained that it was an anti-fraud check, went through some security questions and checked that the recent transactions were genuine. Then they said the Hotelopia transaction would be authorised if re-presented.

Whilst I was on the phone to Egg I had two missed calls on my work phone - one from my wife, to say that Egg had called our house and wanted me to contact them, and one from Egg themselves.

I don't have any issue at all with suspicious transactions being blocked. It was five minutes' inconvenience for me, and avoided Egg losing money due to fraud.

But the way Egg went about this was exemplary. If they'd failed to contact me, I'd have felt disappointed. And if Hotelopia had pretended the transaction was OK (because they didn't check immediately with my bank) I'd be similarly disappointed.

finallydebtfree!! · 17 December 2007 at 9:48PM

Lemon_Tree wrote: »

i remember when i went on hol to Aus, i phoned my bank to say dont' worry if you see transactions from there and they said, 'oh don't worry about telling us, we won't put it on your records'
they are very good at being selective about when they tell you things they've cancelled but guess it's better than fraudulent transactons going through

I opened a nationwide account for my specifically for my holiday to China this year, when I went in to credit the account i asked them to make a note that I was going to China and Hong Kong and they said the same thing, they also said their fraud dept kept a close eye for suspicious activity.

Considering the account had only been used in the uk once I would have thought multiple transactions in China would have been slightly suspicious

let alone when I went to Portugal with my aunt (who incidently goes every year at the same time) her card got stopped on the last day of our trip, when it came to paying the final bill at the hotel. They said that was due to suspicious transactions!

Lemon_Tree · 17 December 2007 at 10:05PM

that's why i thought i'd tell them where i was going. Sometimes you just can't do right for doing wrong when it comes to banks.

Jacks_xxx · 18 December 2007 at 5:40PM

:wave: Hey lovelies! :wave:

Thanks for the support. :T

I'm feeling more philosophical about it all today - although I'm under no illusions about whose money my bank was protecting - and it wasn't mine!

We probably didn't need all that IWOOT stuff anyway.

it was only some solar powered lamps for the kids, and my newest niece to use as nightlights. (I still dream of the day that our leccy meter actually stops moving cos nothing's on!)

Some "Astronaut Food" for my nephew who is dead set on going into space. He doesn't seem to have cottoned on that his bottle top specs and our lack of a space programme in this country might be a small obstacle to his plans. :rolleyes:

I get the impression he thinks he'll leave school next year and go on a spaceman YTS or something.

AND a very classy pencil sharpener shaped as a cat - where to sharpen your pencil you stick it in the cats bum. (I thought Hubby might appreciate a new desk accessory.

)

None of that is exactly essential is it???

So I sent them an email with a pic of the cat sharpener in it and told 'em to stick it up their @r$e.

What can I say? I'm a classy bird! :rotfl:

Love Jacks xxx

meyore · 18 December 2007 at 5:49PM

I've had this happen with my lloyds (yuk, pah etc!) account before-they just decline things because they feel like it I reckon! The website got back to me to let me know it wouldn't go through, but lloyds never bothered. When I contacted them they tried to make out I had a faulty card-how can it be the card, it was an internet transaction! :rotfl:

marksandsparksgal · 18 December 2007 at 5:55PM

I'm in the ame situation as the poster who went to China!

I opened my Nationwide account for my trip to Berlin, and it gets used in various different machines here, in the UK when I go home now and again, and also in Poland when we went for a weekend trip, as did the Nationwide cc, and no one batted an eyelid! It's mad really, I was seriously expecting them to block the cards...though saying that I've probably just bloody jinxed myself and they will over Xmas hah!

Gah! Bank stopped payment on xmas presents cos we "never usually spend much money"

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