Suspicious transaction - "WP-STAGECOACH-SERV"

piptiddlepip wrote: »

This is a warning to all...

This morning I logged in to my internet banking to see if a cheque I had paid in had cleared. While I was at it, I noticed a transaction for £1.50 which I did not remember making. The name of the transaction was "WP-STAGECOACH-SERV". THis struck me as odd, as I would never normally use my debit card for such a small transaction and I didn't recognise the name.

A bit of Google research turned up the following: this kind of transaction occurs when your credit card details have been "skimmed" and the perpetrators will try and put through a small transaction to "test the water". If the transaction succeeds, a few days later they will clean you out.

This happened to me about a month ago with, lo and behold, the £1.50 Stagecoach item (plus another item for £25). Fortunately their next transaction happened to be attempted online at the exact same time I was using my card to buy shoes in a shop and good old Barclaycard phoned through immediately... Curiously the Stage Coach £1.50 was credited back to my account a couple of items later on my statement even though it was before I was aware of the scam. Barclaycard say it was probably picked up by Stagecoach themselves, having found the billing address was wrong. Even a few days after the card was cancelled the thieving little b******s were still trying to use the card to open an ebay account. Scum!

This is the second time this has happened to me in the last 3 years - last time £700 was taken out on the card in France. Luckily there was no question that I'd been in France at the time. Because it had happened before I am really careful - the card doesn't go out of my sight, I tend to use cash machines in banks, careful online... still it happens, even when you're really careful. Grrr...

Here it is - the TK Maxx story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6509993.stm

Makes sense to me, given how anal I am about how I use my card...

I have just noticed that 2 payments from WP-STAGECOACH-SERV for £15.50 & £5.50 have been taken from my account and re-payed 6 days later. Lloyds have now cancelled my debit card, I think I will have to get a credit card
:mad:

wellsie82 wrote: »

Two of them where for muslimaid.org for £1 and one was for Audio Visual Sound for £159 - at this point i burst out crying as i knew that something was wrong so rang up Halifax who cancelled my card.

The woman at Halifax told me there was 7 pending transactions, six of them were for muslimaid.org for the same amount and one for itunesmusic.

I also had fraudulant transactions made to muslimaid a while ago.

This looks like a regular source of income for them, perhaps they should be investigated.

Hi Assa

Phone your bank NOW! They will put you through to their fraud dept who will investigate. They will probably stop your card (so no more money can be taken) and issue a new one. You will probably have to fill in a short form to get your money back, it usually takes about a week I think.