Fraudulent activity on vanquis

Willing2Learn

degsy24 wrote: »

The companies cannot hold customers responsible for ANY costs when this happens as it is risk that they take when their working practices allow such to happen.

As long as the customer has not acted fraudulently, neglectfully or in a way that breached the Terms & Conditions, a customer will always get a full refund including any fees or interest once any investigation has been concluded.

degsy24

Willing2learn, I agree and that's all well and good but the card companies expect the customer to pay the disputed bill as a matter of course because it appears on their statement. I just could not afford to pay a £559 sum which was nothing to do with me....especially at Christmas. I always pay off all my large bill monthly and never incur interest but I was just no going to pay for something that was nothing to do with me just because it suited the declared policy of the credit card company in the hope that eventually I would be able to claim it back. In the meantime I would have had to go overdrawn on my current account to make the payment and thus incur bank charges which I could not legitimately reclaim. Why would anyone do that!....but that is what the credit card company expected me to do. How out of touch are they in this present financial climate? Again I say....never pay a bill that you KNOW is not yours! It doesn't matter what the card company's policy is! In my case there was no possibly compromised PIN involved etc as it was an internet transaction by some fraudster....or a mistake by someone who has billed my account for someone else's purchase. I know for a fact that it was not me. How simple should that be for the card company to investigate? They only need to find out what IP address was used and where the ordered goods were dispatched to.....and it certainly wasn't to my address! That should not take very long! That could surely be done within a week of my initial complaint.....almost 2 months ago....but I am still being charged interest! Incidentally they could not even tell me any details of the alledged purchase other than the date and the vendor as they were on my statement.

SnowTiger

degsy24 wrote: »

In my case there was no possibly compromised PIN involved etc as it was an internet transaction by some fraudster....or a mistake by someone who has billed my account for someone else's purchase. I know for a fact that it was not me. How simple should that be for the card company to investigate? They only need to find out what IP address was used and where the ordered goods were dispatched to.....and it certainly wasn't to my address!

IP address and postal address don't necessarily mean very much. Maybe you placed an order from an Internet cafe or using a wireless hotspot and arranged for it to be delivered to a friend's address. My IP address changes every time I flick the switch on the back of my ADSL router. Although my Internet Provider records which IP address is assigned to my line and when it was assigned, I doubt they'd hand the details over to a credit card provider.

Of course banks can do no right at the moment. And this is one of those cases where whatever they do would be wrong.

Picture the scene the other way around. You report card fraud to your card issuer. It removes the charge from you account and you think it's all forgotten about. Then, two months later after some investigation they contact you. It turns out you did make the purchase, but forgot about it. Oh dear. So the card issuer adds the purchase back to your account, plus all the interest that's accrued, plus charges for missed/late payments. I bet you wouldn't be a happy bunny.

If the purchase was fraudulent it doesn't really matter that your account is a bit of a mess for a while. It will all be sorted out. I've been the victim of credit card fraud. I didn't find it a painful process.

degsy24

Snowtiger, I realise that but at least an IP address and a postal address would be a start. I can prove that I was on holiday nowhere near the IP address that was probably used, be it an internet cafe or wireless hotspot...and nowhere near my home address. I don't posses a laptop or a smart phone. They can also quickly see my historical card usage and my repayment history. My point is that it is unlikely to be a complex investigation which takes 2 months! Also I am hardly likely to 'forget' a purchase of something costing £559...and in my case, ordered from Dublin! You are right though...I have no time for banks as they are not customer friendly, use call centres in places like Mumbai, staffed by people you can't understand and who don't understand you and they make you feel like a criminal when you have a genuine complaint which they drag their feet sorting out. I am an educated working man and consider myself savvy enough when it come to my finances but what happens when the victim of credit card fraud is a vulnerable pensioner and the financial institutions behave as they do? I would hate my 77 year old mother to be such a victim and have the credit card company pile interest onto her account in this way. They are unmoving and you can have several telephone calls with various 'customer service' people who all tell you differing things. If they want us to use credit cards on line or by 'phone then they should put better security in place....for instance when I use my Tesco card I am sometimes asked for some security details in a box which pops up before the transaction is completed....but not always....why not? If they allow insecure transations they should not be surprised that fraud occurs which I guess is fairly extensive. With that in mind they should not employ enough people to sort the matters out more efficiently and at no immediate cost to the customers.