Strange Payments made off my credit cards

ikesouth

Hi All,

I know this is not technically 'money saving', however I am worried about payments that have been made to my credit cards.

I have a Virgin and a Barclaycard credit cards and I only use credit cards for the 0% periods.

I logged in to my Virgin online banking today and saw a payment made of £300. I did not pay £300 off my balance and thought it was a little suspicious.

I logged in to my Barclaycard online banking and on the same date as the payment made off the Virgin card, was the same amount being paid off the Barclaycard account!

This is obviously not as worrying as someone making fraudulent purchases on my accounts, however it does spark up a big worry in my eyes that someone knows both my credit card accounts and are setting me up for a big scam.

Has anyone heard of anything like this happeneing before? I have contacted Barclaycard and they said the payment was a Bank Transfer from a Barclays account in my name. I do not bank with Barclays. I have checked my credit report and there is no evidence of someone trying to set up a Barclays bank account in my name.

Barclaycard did not have any further information and they will not look in to it further!

I am contacting Virgin tomorrow morning once their customer service line opens to query the payment on that card.

Thank you!
Helen

PNPSUKNET

very very strange, I would contact barclays also as maybe a very old account.

chattychappy

It rings a bell. Several years ago I had some mysterious transactions - going both ways from a current account. Some unrecognised ATM withdrawals too. I also had a spurious payment into another account I had at the same bank which had apparently come from my current account when it hadn't.

Turns out someone had exactly the same name as me and had an account at the same branch. Bizarrely for certain types of transaction, when the bank set them up it was quicker for them just to use surname and sort code. (Quicker than typing an account number I suppose) Amazingly the other account holder even ended up with a debit card that debited my account everytime he used it - hence the ATM withdrawals. I asked them to stop my ATM card - they did - they issued a replacement, but of course the spurious withdrawals continued because the "other" card hadn't been stopped!

Not sure if that's what's happened here. But despite all the IT that banks use, there can still be a manual element when things are setup - and if this involves a human selecting from a list and then not checking something they're supposed to, all kinds of weird things happen.

Only after several complaints did they actually work out what had gone wrong. In the meantime they kept refunding stuff "because I was a good customer".

Consumerist

ikesouth wrote: »

This is obviously not as worrying as someone making fraudulent purchases on my accounts, however it does spark up a big worry in my eyes that someone knows both my credit card accounts and are setting me up for a big scam.

I would also find this a bit worrying. My advice would be to send formal written complaints to both banks asking them to investigate. Head the letters in bold with the word Complaint so they are aware that you are making a formal complaint and not just a general enquiry. Send the letters by Recorded Delivery post and keep copies for your records.

ikesouth

Thank you all for your replies.
I am contacting Virgin this morning to see what details they have for the payment and whether it is from Barclays bank again.

I will then be contacting Barclays to request that they look in to it further.