Fraudulent card use at petrol station?

apesxx

Me and my partner share bank cards too but I would never expect to be able to use his card somewhere where I have to sign for it. I was paying for a purchase last week and I had forgotten the pin to his credit card when I got to the till, it only took a minute to call him and ask for it.

SHIPSHAPE

kimminess wrote: »

Surely this is massively fraudulent?! Should I write and tell the company that their clerks are allowing this to happen or shall I mind my own business? Opinions please :A

Go back to the garage and tell the clerk that unless you can fill up your tank with juice for free then you'll rat on them.

Repeat this weekly and you'll never have to pay for fuel again, or until the clerk gets fired for giving away free fuel.

HTAFC112

Forwandert wrote: »

Any payment where the chip and pin function has not been used for whatever reason when there is a chip present on the card can be disputed. The dispute always goes in the favor of the consumer. I had several situations whereby people where presenting chip and pins cards for items of roughly £100 at a time each time the chip and pin card reverted to signature (maybe due to the chip being scratched purposely) each time the payments which we had the imprints for where disputed and reversed. The advise we received was basically the cards may have been cloned and because we didn't pre authorise with the merchant and receive the authorisation codes to keep on record with the imprints the money was gone.

Payments of c.£100 would be above a petrol station's floor limit, meaning that they would need approval from their Acquiring bank to bypass Chip & PIN before proceeding. If you authorise 'offline' (ie without an authorisation code) a payment of that value you will always be liable - how do you know the card is active for a start?

Mindless_Clone

goater78 wrote: »

I would mind your own business. Its frankly nothing to do with you.

Yes, until it's your card that gets cloned/stolen and someone does it with that.

Absolutely report the incident to the Petrol station Manager. Cards are only allowed to be used by the person they are issued to. The clerk should know this and that rule exists precisely to prevent fraud. I know with chip and pin people lend out their cards to spouses etc. all the time but it's a bit different to the cashier knowingly processing a card when the cardholder is not present and the signature doesn't even match. Even if she was genuine, all her fiance has to do is dispute the transaction and the petrol station will be liable for not making proper checks. Then who are they going to pass the cost on to?

System

Mindless_Clone wrote: »

Yes, until it's your card that gets cloned/stolen and someone does it with that.

Absolutely report the incident to the Petrol station Manager. Cards are only allowed to be used by the person they are issued to. The clerk should know this and that rule exists precisely to prevent fraud. I know with chip and pin people lend out their cards to spouses etc. all the time but it's a bit different to the cashier knowingly processing a card when the cardholder is not present and the signature doesn't even match. Even if she was genuine, all her fiance has to do is dispute the transaction and the petrol station will be liable for not making proper checks. Then who are they going to pass the cost on to?

I would just phone the bank and get my money back.

How will one petrol station pass the cost onto us? Will they increase the price of a mars bar by 2p?

Mindless_Clone

FWIW, it is relevant. Just getting your credit card to pay it back doesn't mean the cost doens't get passed on somewhere. They are banks; they don't hesitate to charge normal members of the public at every opportunity so what makes you think they stop at doing the same to big companies?
I used to work as a PFS manager (for a retailer) and the amount of card fraud we saw was dreadful. We were careful (and in a relatively nice area) and lost close you a couple of thousand a week through it. Think about that... roughly £100k a year. The company had something like 200 petrol stations - close to £2 million a year from ONE national retailer. Not to mention all the paperwork of sifting out EFT receipts etc. and the ongoing staff costs to pay for that.

Petrol stations are usually pretty easy targets for card fraud and, unfortunately they are also target for cloners to nick your card details (I had mine cloned in a petrol station). It's ultimately the retailer that foots the bill of most of this fraud and, when it runs into millions, they're not going to not pass on the cost somewhere. So yep, sorry, it might be my uppity high horse or wound up moral compass here but report crime, no matter how small... in the words of one well known retailer, every little helps.

System

It's not actually a crime though is it? The OP witnessed a woman using her fiances card to pay for petrol. Is that illegal?

Azari

goater78 wrote: »

It's not actually a crime though is it? The OP witnessed a woman using her fiances card to pay for petrol. Is that illegal?

Correction: The OP witnessed a woman who claimed that she was using her fiances card to pay for petrol.

And it's not a matter of whether it's legal or not. It's a systemic failure in the procedure used by (al least) that particular assistant. So you might feel it worthwhile to bring the matter to the attention of the company concerned.

In the same way that if you saw a hole in a fence between a children's playground and a railway line you may not have seen anyone do anything illegal but it would certainly be best to report it.

System

In the assistants defence the customer had already taken the fuel. It was therefore a case of taking payment from a dubious method or taking no payment at all.

I don't agree with your analogy. In your example people's lives are genuinely in danger and reporting the hole would be a sensible idea. This is a far more petty complaint. I rank it there with reporting every car on the motorway that is going higher than 70mph.

Let's face it the company will do nothing and I imagine they may all have a private laugh at the OPs expense.

gregg1

goater78 wrote: »

The transaction is between the customer and the petrol station. It's not turning a blind eye to realise its nothing to do with you.

So you would never report suspicious/criminal activity if it was happening right under your nose because "it's nothing to do with you"?

What a great attitude you have there!