Reporting fraud to your CC company

seasidepom

This is a cautionary tale about what to do if you find your card has been used fraudulently - bear with me, I need to set the scene first!

A few weeks ago, I posted on here about Lloyds TSB allowing nearly £3k of fraudulent transactions to go through on my Amex card even though I reported it after noticing the first £900, and their subsequent total failure of customer service in this regard. (And thanks once again to all those who offered advice).

More than three months after my initial contact with LTSB and after getting the Ombudsman involved, someone who actually has a brain at LTSB has finally contacted me and begun to sort this mess out.

£1800 of the fraudulent amount was refunded to my account around 7 weeks ago, leaving the original £900 still outstanding. No amount of letters and telephone calls caused LTSB to refund this money and I was at a total loss to understand why - until now.

When I first telephoned, I dealt with one person - the person who answered my call. He assured me that the card would be cancelled, a new one issued and the monies refunded. The problem? He was NOT on the fraud team and just marked my card as "lost". The fraudulent transactions were all transferred onto my new card as a "customer balance transfer". This is why LTSB were resolutely refusing to refund - as far as they were concerned, this was money I had BT'd and therefore I should be paying it. Shame no one at LTSB thought to enlighten me as to this state of affairs. I was given various excuses such as I hadn't returned a declaration form (they hadn't sent one) or they couldn't see the transactions on their screen (eh? I could!!). No one said to me "Sorry madam, it's YOUR balance transfer. You have to pay it." If they had, I would have put them right!

What I am saying here is if you are reporting anything of this kind, ensure that you are speaking to the fraud team and not just the first person who takes the call - you may save yourself all the hassle I've had! Having never experienced this before, I assumed that just anyone at the customer service number could assist.

Incidentally, the state of play at the moment is that all the interest and charges have been refunded to me, plus £50 compensation. The £900 will be credited "in the next 5 working days" - apparently! We'll see!

natweststaffmember

I totally agree with you and the person you spoke to should have placed a "stolen" and not "lost" marker on the card. Pity it has taken so long to sort out.

emc

I also had to contact American Express recently about an unrecognised transaction on my credit card statement, and asked for the card to be cancelled and a replacement card sent to me.

I also asked for the name, address and telephone number of the place where the transaction was supposed to have taken place. I rang the place, but the manager refused to discuss the matter with me, so I rang American Express back and told them.

I asked American Express to exclude the transaction amount from my bill but they refused saying that I had to pay it, and then claim it back as a disputed transaction. I had to insist on speaking to the fraud team, and was eventually put through to someone who said he would remove the amount from my account, pending the investigation, which he said had a target date of 1 Aug 2008.

The following week, I received a replacement card.

I just got my monthly statement, and of course the disputed amount had not been removed! I rang American Express again, and they said that the statement had been prepared by the time the guy said he'd remove the amount, but the amount would be refunded to my bank account. It has yet to appear in my bank account!

Vanilla_Bean

Similar problem with TSB, though they did put me through to the fraud dept, but I had to call back when it was open (9am-5pm) it took them 8 weeks and several nagging phone calls to send me the declaration form, another several weeks to remove the amounts, had to keep nagging them to remove all of them, I'm still being charged interest on the amounts they removed.
Did you only get compensation when you complained to them or when the Ombudsman? I am out of pocket because of this, being aboard when it happened. It's stressful enough having someone use your card but dealing with the bank is a nightmare!

Seasidepom - I recommend you keep checking they have actually removed it all and check the interest!

angels_haze

I have my own online business, a baby boutique...Last week we had an order for over £300.00, fortunatley before the order was dispatched a gentleman got in touch with us and said that he had just checked his online banking and a payment had been made to us for x amount of money and we shouldn't send it because his cc details had been stolen and were being used at many other online shops. He had called his cc company to put a stop on the card and had called the police who said that they don't investigate these things (he had the theifs address etc) because the cc companys fraud department would, which they did not. Anyway, we didn't send the order and everything worked out ok for us, payment was recalled, no goods lost.

So today we have another payment in excess of £300.00 with a similar postcode (different billing, shipping and card holder addresses) and the same email address but commiting fraud with a different name and a different card, a barclay card...called barclays right away so that we could ask thm to inform their customer that someone is using their card to commit fraud...spent 3 hours on the phone being passed from person to person, department to department and not a single person knew what to do or how to help...what?!!! What if it was me, my card and someone was trying to help and stop fraud? Oh dear Barclays!

Barclays didn't care, Visa didn't care, Police didn't care, our payment processor Protx didn't care (actually said that our customer who is experiencing the fraud needs to contact their card issuer, how are they supposed to do that when they don't know) Who do I call or speak to? Who cares about fraud apart from the consumer? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Vanilla_Bean

angels_haze wrote: »

I have my own online business, a baby boutique...Last week we had an order for over £300.00, fortunatley before the order was dispatched a gentleman got in touch with us and said that he had just checked his online banking and a payment had been made to us for x amount of money and we shouldn't send it because his cc details had been stolen and were being used at many other online shops. He had called his cc company to put a stop on the card and had called the police who said that they don't investigate these things (he had the theifs address etc) because the cc companys fraud department would, which they did not. Anyway, we didn't send the order and everything worked out ok for us, payment was recalled, no goods lost.

So today we have another payment in excess of £300.00 with a similar postcode (different billing, shipping and card holder addresses) and the same email address but commiting fraud with a different name and a different card, a barclay card...called barclays right away so that we could ask thm to inform their customer that someone is using their card to commit fraud...spent 3 hours on the phone being passed from person to person, department to department and not a single person knew what to do or how to help...what?!!! What if it was me, my card and someone was trying to help and stop fraud? Oh dear Barclays!

Barclays didn't care, Visa didn't care, Police didn't care, our payment processor Protx didn't care (actually said that our customer who is experiencing the fraud needs to contact their card issuer, how are they supposed to do that when they don't know) Who do I call or speak to? Who cares about fraud apart from the consumer? Anyone? Anyone at all?

That's shocking they don't want to help, especially Barclays, wont their fraud dept get on the case? Ask to speak to them directly.
They really ought to pool this information between them, it does sound like one person trying their luck with many different cards. There doesn't seem to be much come back to robbing £1000's of pounds from companies in other peoples names.

Good on you for trying to do something about it!
I don't know if its worth trying to contact CIFAS or Experian or the like?

seasidepom

Vanilla Bean - I was only contacted by a senior member of the customer relations staff after the Ombudsman told LTSB to sort it out and only then did I receive the offer of £50 compensation. The main sum has still not been refunded, but they have refunded the interest wrongly charged. I am checking on a daily basis and have noted what you say about checking future interest. This should be easy to do as I pay off my balance each month, never normally accruing any interest. Thanks for the tip!

The £50 easily covers my costs on the telephone and postage expenses and leaves me in pocket to the tune of around £35 but in all honesty I would rather the whole episode had never occurred than have that!

I got the LTSB cards in order to collect Air Miles when Nat West stopped doing them. I'd had my Nat West cards for 25 years with no problems whatsoever! Wish I never bothered changing!

James

Here's an MP, a victim of Frauds findings:

"Currently banks procedures on what information is given to customers differ but once the customer is re-imbursed the bank is the victim and only they can make the decision to report the matter to the police, according to APACS, the industry’s payments association."

Click here for MPs article.


According to APACS if you spot an unauthorised transaction in your statement you should contact them first. It would seem lots of this type of crime goes unreported.

Mixed messages on who to report a suspicious transaction to: (BBC)

"Anyone who used the cash machine between May and the first week of June, and who noticed suspicious withdrawals from their account, is advised to contact their bank and inform the police."

Click here for BBC article.

Comments:

t looks as if an awful lot of plastic card crime now goes unreported.

If YOU deem a transaction fraudulent and you end up disputing this with your card issuer, then I'm sure against advice from APACS if you did report this to the Police it would add more weight to your case.

seasidepom

I see the point about the bank being the victim once they have reimbursed the money but in my particular case, if they had blocked this when I first reported it, they could have saved themselves £1800 so I have little sympathy there!

It didn't occur to me to go to the Police but having seen the problems a friend of mine had the other day trying to report a break in at her property to our local Police, I can't imagine they'd have shown much interest in my case. (They told her that unless she'd seen someone or had some proof, they had no evidence to show a crime had been committed and weren't going to do anything about it!!)

Incidentally, I STILL haven't had the £885 refunded..... :mad:

James

What happens just now is members of the public should report card and cheque crime to their banks rather than police.

Latest thinking:

Victims of cyber crime should be able to report incidents to the police, according to the officer in charge of a new e-crime unit.

“If you are a victim of a crime, you report it to the police. If you don't, it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t get tackled, and we don’t get the resources in the future to fight it,” said DS McMurdie.

Article click here.