Pay n Go debit card fraud

Lucykira

In August my bank was charged 2x £10 on the same day for'O2 UK Pay and Go. I have a regular payment for an O2 SIM card for my iPad, which had already gone through normally. As a result of all my enquiries, I had to get my card cancelled and renewed with my bank and it was treated as a fraud case.
I since put in the new details of my card to renew the monthly payment. Just yesterday, I checked my bank and another £10 was taken as well as my usual payment (£10.21). Checking with an O2 guru online, they say that I was only charged my normal amount and they have no record of this other £10 against my sim account. So I have been done again!
Is this happening elsewhere? How common is it? How does it happen and who is getting the money?:eek:

DegFafa

Hi,

Same has happened to me.
Three consecutive debits of £10 with mention : "O2 UK Pay & Go".
and Six consecutive debits of £0.64 with mention : "Firstgiving - PAYM"

None of them is genuine.

jonesMUFCforever

Fraud of this kind is very common.
Just tell your bank and they should refund.

I would make sure that your computer is completely clean in case you have a trojan or other malware on there.

dalesrider

I wish I had a £ for every time I see 02 Pay & go.... Or any other mobile company top up fraud.....

Remember everytime you use your card. The retailer side of the system has the full card no on it.
At a guess they simply tap the card details into a phone and top it that way.
02 get the money.... The fraudsters get the airtime.

Lucykira

Is there a way of them tracing who is doing the fraud for Pay and Go? If this is common, surely there must be a way of tracing the mobile phones that are being topped up. We can't go on just accepting that it happens. I would like to find out how much this is happening. Can we start some kind of survey? I bet it runs into thousands of pounds.

dalesrider

Lucykira wrote: »

Is there a way of them tracing who is doing the fraud for Pay and Go? If this is common, surely there must be a way of tracing the mobile phones that are being topped up. We can't go on just accepting that it happens. I would like to find out how much this is happening. Can we start some kind of survey? I bet it runs into thousands of pounds.

I know from people at some of the mobile co's that their fraud departments only look at contract fraud. PAYG fraud is not touched other than blocking the phones the top up went too.
So yes it is traced, but most of these are unregistered phones that have simply got a PAYG sim in. Remember you can pick these up FOC from many places. So no link to anyone.

Nothing that can be done to stop it happening untill mobile co's only allow sim's and phones to be registered to people, who are then checked to ensure that the card is theirs.
So the solution lies with the mobile co's as they are standing the loss as the banks claim the money back.

Well not sure if you will ever find how much £££ is lost to mobile topups. As the banks wont supply the figures. If you google you can get some reports on the various types of fraud.

All I will say is its the most common fraud seen.

Lucykira

Interesting! I know the amounts are trivial compared with some frauds, but if people are getting £10,20,30 from thousands of these frauds unnoticed, that is a lot of money! Bearing in mind that I changed my debit card number and input the new details in for the monthly payment and two payments later the fraud happened again, it makes me wonder if it is coming from persons within the company (O2) who have access to the card details. I have sent an online letter to Watchdog to see if they are interested in investigating.