Play.com Fraud - warning

andreweduk

My god, so it's not just me then!!

My play.com account has been used by someone else to purchase a mobile phone. I went to the cash maching on Saturday and noticed a difference of £44.99 betwee the balance and available balance. I knew I hadn't bought anything which would cause this. When I got home, I had an order confirmation from www.play.com for a mobile phone to be delivered to an address in London. I phoned my bank straight away and they cancelled my card and are investigating. They said they MAY be able to stop the transaction, but if not, I'll have to wait for a refund. I rang Play.com's helpline and told them what had happened. They said they may not be able to stop the order being sent out, even though it has not been sent and today is a Sunday, so it won't go today! They basically said it was my fault and I must have done something to allow my account to be accessed. I told her to stop the order going out and to refund my card, but they said they cannot guarantee that. How hard can it be! The thing that I find most worrying, is that for them to buy something with my account, they did not have to enter ANY card details, not even the card security number!! So they get into your account and have FULL USE of your card(s)! On a lot of sites, you have to enter the security number, even if the card number is saved. On many, you even have to answer security questions too. I find this to be very unsafe and have asked them to close my account! In the meantime I'm left £45 short and I need that money for my rent on Tuesday!

JAG

From the number of posts on here it's clear the security breach is with Play.

If they say otherwise they are just fobbing you off.

But since Play won't lose out, the Police won't investigate, and the Banks won't invlolve the Police because the amount of money it would cost them to investigate it, it is cheaper to write off the fraudulent transactions. Then these frauds will just continue.

And unless Play are found to be the source of the security breach the Banks will presume it is the customer that has been careless with their card details.

krazyburd23

This happened to me a couple of years ago now. I had 2 random payments on my bank statement for play.com, I immediately tried to login to my account but I couldnt get in! Whoever did it had already changed my password so I had no chance of logging in again. Play.com were useless when i called them the first time, they didnt want to know. The second time (by this time I had steam coming from every orifice), the guy on the phone was quite helpful and provided me with a name and address of where the items had gone. I had a long chat with him and he even said that it sounded like an inside job!! The person who had changed my details, knew exactly which details could be changed without it alerting them to a potential fraud problem, something he said only people working there would know! How true this is i dont know, luckily natwest credited my debit card back and since then I have never even gone on to the play website.

I heard from the police about 8 months after i reported it, to say they had been round a couple of times, but nobody had opened the door so they were closing the case! If I had known they would take so long about it, I would have gone round there myself and punched the thieving swine in the face!

The fraud on my debit card only happened on my play.com account. There was a good couple of weeks between them doing it and me getting my bank statement, they could have completely cleaned me out, which I am sure they would have done if they had my card details!

I hope all of you who are experiencing this nightmare get your problems sorted out and that any money you have lost gets refunded asap.

The_Grateful_Ghoul

Did anyone hear back from watchdog?
There must be a growing amount of evidence on this thread alone now.

mikem1986

Ive had no reply from Watchdog

SCooling

I've purposely joined the forum to add my comments about this subject :wave:

I have also recently been scammed on the play.com website and I can't believe that so many others have too. I received an e-mail about a month ago confirming my £34.99 DVD purchase for Mr A Osis, 62 Chalcombe Ave, Northampton. I called Play to see whether this was a mistake or not, but was advised that the payment was stopped as they knew it wasn't me and my account was suspended.

Having recently moved with no internet access for over a month I was shocked that this could have happened, as my account details and debit card details wasn't told to anyone. Luckily being with Barclays the debit card payment was never taken from my account - probably due to the added vertification process you have to follow.

God knows what could have happened if the payment has been taken from my account. Anyway, I rang my local police straight away, gave them all the details and got a crime number - they were very helpful. I also then rang my bank, advised them of the attempted fraud issue, cancelled my card and re-ordered a new pin number.

I would suggest anyone with a play.com account to change your credit/debit card details to a test card number to avoid any future issues like this one. I doubt I will use them again and feel disappointed such a huge company could let this happen :mad: Considering most of their customers buy through their online payment system they really should look at a better security system.

Thanks to all on this thread as I thought I was alone with this issue. Good luck all!

allycute1

hi guys i ordered a dvd from play.com and subsequently my identity was stolen i ended up with 100s of pounds on my visa bill and didnt realise until the bill came in a month later!! I reported to the police got a crime number then reported to visa and eventually got my money back play.com put a block on my account and even knew who it was but would not give me there contact details as they were protected under privacy how stupid is that? needless to say i would never buy from them again so please be warned it took about 4 months to get sorted and get my money back

twinmummy+2-2

Thanks for this info. I just logged into my play.com account and saw my card has expired so I'll leave it that way. Can't believe they are not interested in doing anything about this.

The_Grateful_Ghoul

SCooling wrote: »

I've purposely joined the forum to add my comments about this subject :wave:

I have also recently been scammed on the play.com website and I can't believe that so many others have too. I received an e-mail about a month ago confirming my £34.99 DVD purchase for Mr A Osis, 62 Chalcombe Ave, Northampton. I called Play to see whether this was a mistake or not, but was advised that the payment was stopped as they knew it wasn't me and my account was suspended.

Having recently moved with no internet access for over a month I was shocked that this could have happened, as my account details and debit card details wasn't told to anyone. Luckily being with Barclays the debit card payment was never taken from my account - probably due to the added vertification process you have to follow.

God knows what could have happened if the payment has been taken from my account. Anyway, I rang my local police straight away, gave them all the details and got a crime number - they were very helpful. I also then rang my bank, advised them of the attempted fraud issue, cancelled my card and re-ordered a new pin number.

I would suggest anyone with a play.com account to change your credit/debit card details to a test card number to avoid any future issues like this one. I doubt I will use them again and feel disappointed such a huge company could let this happen :mad: Considering most of their customers buy through their online payment system they really should look at a better security system.

Thanks to all on this thread as I thought I was alone with this issue. Good luck all!

Huge thanks for taking the time to register on here and share your story, if more people do so, maybe something can be done. Welcome by the way :beer:

chalkysoil

cragglescott wrote: »

This has recently happened to me too. I was quite unlucky that because the goods had been dispatched they would not stop the transaction so because of play.com I'm now out a significant amount of money.

because I've used play.com before my bank have informed me that it's not fraud. I'm absolutely incensed! I'm a lawyer, and I've sent a claim letter to play.com - I'd be interested to know whether anyone would be willing to be joined to the proceedings or whether they'd be willing to give evidence as to the situation?

keep us informed how it goes... and good luck.