How long can you use a stolen debit card for?

mjt01

I had my wallet stolen on Thursday, with all my cards in it.

All cards were cancelled by Thursday 6pm. On Friday, my smile debit card was then used and authorised for £750 worth of transactions. Obviously, I execpt that I will not have to pay for this, but why was it not stopped on Thursday?

They cannot yet confirm whether there are are any more transactions over the weekend.

I know a smiliar event occurred some years ago with a friend's NatWest debit card.

Do any of the banks have the ability to cancel debit cards? Why do they allow stolen cards to be used?

Does anyone have any other experencies of any other banks, as I would prefer to deal with a bank that is able to prevent criminals from spending money using my cards.

Another frustrating point is that one of the transactions was to pay a t-mobile bill, I contacted t-mobile, and they confirmed that my credit card had been used to credit an account, but would not tell me who the criminal was ('data protection'). Does anyone know how can I get this information?

Tony_H_3

Another frustrating point is that one of the transactions was to pay a t-mobile bill, I contacted t-mobile, and they confirmed that my credit card had been used to credit an account, but would not tell me who the criminal was ('data protection'). Does anyone know how can I get this information?

You can't get this information, but it will come to light as & when prosecutions are brought!! I do hope you wasn't hurt, injured or suffered and direct shock as a result of the theft.

Midas

yes I have heard of cards being used a week after they were 'cancelled'. Hopefully chip 'n' pin will help stop some of this as it actually checks your card online to verify the pin number, so you'd think they could flag it up if the card had been reported stolen... Its funny how big brother sometimes looks the other way...

davidcampbell

if the retailer authorises the transaction on their own system - in other words doesnt contact the bank and just puts it through, the first the bank knows about it is when the retailer claims the money. this has been promised to them so they need to get the money and the bank needs to pay it.

no-one at the bank can tell the retailer it is a stolen card, at the point of sale, as no-one at the bank knows its being used for a purchase

(either that or they didnt actually cancel it on thursday ??)

assuming they did cancel it on the thursday, they did all they could.

omega27

Midas wrote:

yes I have heard of cards being used a week after they were 'cancelled'. Hopefully chip 'n' pin will help stop some of this as it actually checks your card online to verify the pin number, so you'd think they could flag it up if the card had been reported stolen... Its funny how big brother sometimes looks the other way...

C&P checks that the PIN you entered matches the one on the card, it's not an online check. So if the transaction is under the store's online verification limit & not yet on the hot list, the transaction will be authorised.

Fatboy_NSS

Also the transactions may have been made before the card was cancelled but are showing up on your account a couple days later.

Paul_Varjak

I suppose this is one benefit of the Solo/Electron cards, where transactions cannt take place until the terminal at the shop verifies you have funds to pay for the transaction!

Trouble is, many terminals cannot do this!

DaveK

Owning my own business, I know that if I except a Credit Card I do so at my own risk (chip & Pin or not), therefore I am the one that loses out if it turns out to be fraudulent.

If a card is refused by the bank I don't accept it. So unless the retailer didn't check I can't understand why the transaction would have been processed.

davidcampbell

Paul_Varjak wrote:

I suppose this is one benefit of the Solo/Electron cards, where transactions cannt take place until the terminal at the shop verifies you have funds to pay for the transaction!

Trouble is, many terminals cannot do this!

good idea in theory but many retailers (imo a majority not just a few) do not make the appropriate checks

some people prefer using electron/solo for the above reason but it doesnt work in practice the way it should

on a daily basis i deal with people who have incurred bank charges as a result of using an electron debit card when there was no money in the account.

the excuse given time and again is "i didnt think it would go through unless i had money so i just kept using it"


DC

omega27

Tony_H wrote:

You can't get this information, but it will come to light as & when prosecutions are brought!!

You'll probaly find that the T-Mobile PAYG account isn't registered to anyone, and has just been topped up then used to call a payphone in Venezuela (or some other random country). Suely no-one's thick enough to use a stolen card to topup a phone which is registered to themselves?! May as well just call the police yourself.

Martini

If we were really serious about catching the criminal T-Mobile could trace that phone and we could catch the culprit. The technology exists. The fact is no one seems to care about these small crimes. The fact is it all adds up to many millions a year and we are all paying for it! It's about time they started applying a zero tolerance policy and cleaning up this country! There are loads of East European criminal gangs stealing our money. They'll not hesitate to "take you out" if you cross them I'm sure!