Barclays Bank – Permitting - Debit Card Fraud and do not seem to care.

Scottie_UK

Hello,
I’m new to money saving expert, bit I like to say thanks all for being there and thanks Martin for setting up this great site.

Now our problem and apologies for the long post but this is an odd and unjust situation.


Last month on 4th November, my wife lost her Visa debit card on a train journey home from work. When she got home she realised and immediately phoned our bank and had it cancelled.

Last week she checked her account online and noticed that small £3-£20 transactions were still being processed on her old supposedly cancelled card. So she contacted the bank’s fraud people on the phone. They were not very helpful and did not tell her why this was allowed to happen despite acknowledging the problem. All they could do was give her a claim form to claim back the lost money. Well we thought that would be the end of it.

Four days later my wife checks her account again and still money is being withdrawn from the OLD supposedly CANCELED debit card. So she phones up the fraud people and gets put through to some incompetent who fobbed her off with no real answer, other than to wait for the claim form which after 4 days had not arrived.

Because of the poor treatment she received, I decided to speak to them myself, this time we got though to someone who seemed competent, caring and who offered some meaningful advice. They told us to go to our branch immediately the next day and cancel the account and set up a new one, as this was the only way to guarantee payments would not get though.

So the next day we go to our bank and see a personal banker. All they seemed to want to do is wash their hands of us: sorry not our problem speak to fraud, ‘computer says no’ style. They also contradicted everything the fraud people had advised us the previous night, and confirmed their different advice by speaking to the fraud dept themselves. Here’s what they said:

Bank: “If you cancel your account the payments will default to your main account so cancelling your account will not make a difference.”

Me: “Why, it’s a transaction of a cancelled card, It’s your job to stop those payments.”

Bank “Well direct debits are guaranteed payments. That’s the system and nothing we can do.”

Me “But the card is cancelled.”

Bank “That’s just the system sir, you can make a complaint if you want to.”

Me “Well I’ll cancel all our accounts and change banks then.”

Bank “Well we have your address and can still trace the payments back to you.”

At this point I wanted to swear but bit my tongue.

So they gave us a form to fill in to claim back the amounts which by now were £90 odd. When asked they could not guarantee it would not happen again and said that if it does you will just have to fill in another form.

Well this is very bad service.

Just to fill you in the fraudulent payments were coming from a train operator, the same one my wife travels to work on, but the amounts vary and are different from her usual ticket amounts. Furthermore the ticket collectors have a machine that is not chip and pin and requires only a signature which is easily faked.

We have contacted the ombudsmen, who said they could only act if the bank refused to refund us.

We contacted the train operator who really did not give a damn.

We contacted the transport police, who said it was a matter for the bank to report and not us.

So what do we do?

Kind Regards,

Andrew.

iblametheparents

Just so you know, a transaction which has been authorised can clear on to your account up to six months after a card has been cancelled. It doesn't matter what state the card is in when it clears, only when it is authorised. Six months is an extreme though, most payments clear on to the statement within 10 days - you shouldn't see any more transactions going on after this time.

Scottie_UK

All the tranactions made were on ariva trains wales, and spread over the month after the card was canceled (early november) untill just the other day.

My wife does travel with this company but her weekly ticket is a fixed ammount. All these payments varied in ammount and some were up £20.50 others were £1.50 or £3 ish each. There were quite a few about 15 in all.

Are you telling me that new transactions can be authorised on a canceled debit card?

never-in-doubt

Scottie_UK wrote: »

Are you telling me that new transactions can be authorised on a canceled debit card?

On the train machines, yes. You can use a stolen/cancelled card because they are not live PDQ's meaning they store the data and charge your card later. The bank is obligated to pay a supplier (i.e. arriva trains) in the event of the card being presented, regardless of whether it was used after cancellation or not (for instance arriva may only do banking once a month so your bank would pay them).

Basically the only places they could use the card is on a train or on board a plane buying duty free (daft really cos they know who you are with seat number and can match the sale and subsequent fraud to your home address).

never-in-doubt

edit - additional info: Eventually arriva will update the PDQ's with the 'hot list' of cards which will then tell the conductor to retain it, when the person next tries to use it but this could be a while - last I knew train companies done this half yearly but with the current amount of fraud i'd not be surprised if it was sooner like monthly/quarterly.....

al25

Thought it's chip and pin all across, or did the OP loose thier pin as well?

Scottie_UK

never-in-doubt wrote: »

On the train machines, yes. You can use a stolen/cancelled card because they are not live PDQ's meaning they store the data and charge your card later. The bank is obligated to pay a supplier (i.e. arriva trains) in the event of the card being presented, regardless of whether it was used after cancellation or not (for instance arriva may only do banking once a month so your bank would pay them).

Basically the only places they could use the card is on a train or on board a plane buying duty free (daft really cos they know who you are with seat number and can match the sale and subsequent fraud to your home address).

Thanks for the reply.

I understand banks honouring transactions, but surely if the bank honours a transation from a canceled card the account holder should be exhonorable from all responcability instead of paying the price for their mistake.

Surely this is a deep flaw in the whole Visa payment system that needs adressing ASAP. I cannot beleive this loop hole is aknowleged but not dealt with. Quite franky its its shocking.

never-in-doubt

Scottie_UK wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

I understand banks honouring transactions, but surely if the bank honours a transation from a canceled card the account holder should be exhonorable from all responcability instead of paying the price for their mistake.

Yes you will be, it depends on who the bank is to be honest, on how it gets dealt with. But as chip and pin rules, it can be hard to forge so maybe this is why the bank are arguing with you..... basically, you're not liable - that is the fact of the matter and no matter what your bank say, you stand by your guns and proceed to the FOS if the bank send a final response letter.

Scottie_UK wrote: »

Surely this is a deep flaw in the whole Visa payment system that needs adressing ASAP. I cannot beleive this loop home is aknowleged but not dealt with. Quite franky its its shocking, they are allowing theft.

Thing is (hard to explain) the bank issue the card and as part of the 'trust' they agree to honour any payments when the card was used, at the end of the day it isn't the shopkeepers fault. In this case, a cancelled card does not register immediately with the PDQ's used on trains and therefore the train company will take this hit (through their fraud loss insurance most probably). It just takes time for the bank to sort out, but they should not be messing you around.

Make sense?

Scottie_UK

never-in-doubt wrote: »

Yes you will be, it depends on who the bank is to be honest, on how it gets dealt with. But as chip and pin rules, it can be hard to forge so maybe this is why the bank are arguing with you..... basically, you're not liable - that is the fact of the matter and no matter what your bank say, you stand by your guns and proceed to the FOS if the bank send a final response letter.


Thing is (hard to explain) the bank issue the card and as part of the 'trust' they agree to honour any payments when the card was used, at the end of the day it isn't the shopkeepers fault. In this case, a cancelled card does not register immediately with the PDQ's used on trains and therefore the train company will take this hit (through their fraud loss insurance most probably). It just takes time for the bank to sort out, but they should not be messing you around.

Make sense?

Thanks again for your quick reply.

I understood perfectly what you meant the first time, but I still fail to see why the transactions are allowed to hit our account. Ok so the they must honour the payment, but given the bank knows the card has been cancelled why does it come though to us? Surely each transaction in the system has the date transaction was initiated (i.e when the conductor swiped the card). If this date was greater of equal to that when the card was cancelled surely the banks should realise fraud has been attempted, flag it up and prevent us getting charged and multiple times.

Just for background info my wife rides an Arriva train to work every day, on the same region/lines we suspect the frauds are taking place.

Given this background, this problem is especially more serious when valid payments from the new card are coming though weeks ahead of the fraudulent transactions (both for Ariva Trains Wales). Surely the banks systems should have flagged up a possible fraud attempt before even we realised.

This just seems shoddy on behalf of the banks.

They do a very good job of calling me up when I buy things online, so why don't they pick up on this very obvious abuse.