Are Credit Cards Safer to Use than Debit Cards?

CelticStar

My husband and I recently had a bad experience when his debit card was cloned and a large sum of money removed from our bank account. We had thought that we were covered against all sorts of card fraud through our Sentinel insurance policy but we were wrong. Sentinel refused to pay out because our card had been cloned and not physically stolen and I presume this means that if we bought something with our debit card and the people used out details to steal money off of us or defraud us in any way then we wouldn't be covered in that case either.

This has worried me a lot as we use our debit cards all the time as I think credit cards are more of a temptation. However, from what I can gather, if your credit card is used fraudulently by somebody else then you are automatically covered against such fraud - am I right? If so, then it would probably be safer for us to use credit cards for online transactions.

I would really appreciate any advice you can give me in this matter.

Thanks.
CelticStar

iamchrisli

I dont think it has a definate answer for your questions.

Credit card does provide wider protection for you:
1. As credit card does not have access to your money, even if the worse case happens, it wont draw money from your bank account straigth away (it means, you might escape some overdrawn fee, failed to pay bills, etc). Later even if the bank refuses your claim you still pay it back on the monthly basis....

2. As credit card has it own limit, any attempt to over your limit will be declined by the credit card issuer, another way to protect you. But some bank still will let the transcation goest through, as they want to charge you over limit fee. Anyway, most the issuers wont let the transcation authorised.

P.S. It would be good that to have a credit card with sensiable limit to cover your online shopping, but not too much even if its details have been stolen or cloned.

3. Do some research before you apply the card, some issuer provide better security online and offline, like using Vertified by Visa, or MasterCode etc.(It will pop up another window to put in random number of your own password for online transcation with participating website).

In a word, as the idea of credit card is to give you access to "credit", so even if the worse suitation happen, it wont bite your own "real" money.

P.S Most of the insurance policy does not covered cloned card, be sure before you buy any policy

James

Sorry to learn of your husbands misfortune. I presume you husbands card was used with his PIN and not his signature?

Has your husband has reported this to the police?

Your card issuer should have refund the fraudulent withdrawal in full, unless they can PROVE you husband was negligent with his PIN.

I asked this very same questions of CPP, there verbal reply was, 'of course Sir, you are covered. Maybe not.

nattysims

My husbands card wasn't even cloned, they just used his number over the internet and paid over £600 off to Vanguis Bank and barclaycard!

giggs11

the way i see it is that if someone fraudulently uses my debit card then that is real money that is lost to me meaning i would struggle to pay bills and cover dd's etc as i only keep sufficient in my current acc to cover things like this, nothing extra. then there's all the charges that would be added for failed dd's etc and it could take weeks to get sorted and get your money back if they decide to refund it.

if someone does it with my credit card then its the banks money they have stolen and the only way it would affect me is to reduce the credit available to me for the time it takes to get sorted and refunded. chances are that any fraudulant payments would be stopped anyway as i only have 4 cc's, 2 with lowish limits that i use alternately for all my spedning and pay back each month and 2 that i have bt's stoozed on, so all pretty much up to their limits for most of the time.

my advice for what its worth is to only ever use cc's to pay for goods and pay it off when the statement comes in. i know it takes an extra bit of work but you can set your dd to pay off full balance each month so it's just like swapping one bit of plastic for another if that makes sense. i guard my debit card with my life!

CelticStar

Thanks for all the replies.

Luckily for us our bank did an internal investigation and then refunded us the money but it did make me more aware of credit and debit card fraud.