Stolen cards being used after cancellation.

Enfrance

Nearly two weeks ago my wife and I were carjacked on the AP-7 autopiste in Spain. Apparently this is very common on this route near Barcelona which is little comfort to us being left with just 5€, no cards, no passports etc.

We cancelled our Barclays cards on the day but since then they are continuing to be used. So far they have stolen about £600 in various ways. I have done a bit of research and places like tolls and other retail outlets are not fussy about checking cards so this sort of thing may continue for some time.

A really weird thing is that some of the earlier transactions in Spain seem to have disappeared from our accounts - I had noted them - could Barclays be doing this?

It has been very difficult dealing with Barclays. I would really like to close our exisiting current accounts but open new ones so that any fraudulent activity on the old accounts will come to nothing and we won't be perpetually ringing Barclays to report yet more thefts. The main problem with reporting is that by the time you have been reimbursed, what with all the additional paperwork, your account will have been raided again. One example on another forum cites 3 years and still ongoing!

We have almost emptied our current accounts online so if the thieves manage to use the cards and then take us into the red, what will happen then? Anyone know? Will Barclays sue? Sorry, just trying to inject some humour into a !!!!!! situation.

Normally, we only use these accounts for online ordering in sterling, the Marks and Amazon stuff, but we could just use our Barclaycards online so we could have a situation where all the transactions on the current account will be fraudulent.

Has anyone had experience of trying to do this? Needless to say I am avoiding talking to Barclays as our experience at the time of the robbery was that their customer service is utterly useless.

We live in France so there is no chance of our joining another UK bank and anyway why should we, we've been with Barclays since the 60's but at the moment we are not happy?

dalesrider

Given that the cards have been stopped then these transactions should/will be going to a internal account and then being transfered over.
Should not happen given you have already confirmed fraud with barclays. Unless they are running a automated system that just transfers everything over.
Yes. This could go on for a while as tolls are not authorised. But Barclays can place a higher fraud report on the card (costs them) and this usually stops this pretty quick.

If due to fraud you are taken overlimit. ANY charges have to be refunded back to you.

Personally as someone who deals with fraud.
You should not be chasing Barclays.
I would ring ask for the fraud team and raise a complaint. Putting it simply that you have reported your cards as stolen, so why are they now 2 weeks later still passing fraudlent transactions to your account and causing you to have to contact them to chase this up. They should be monitoring your account and dealing with these....
Mention costs of calls from France. Which see at least some compensation for these.

reclusive46

This is something I never understood with these offline tolls. Surely these stolen cards could be used forever? Last time I checked they work with magstripe, so the EMV chip offline limit doesn't apply.

Enfrance

Thank you both for the replies. This is foreign territory for us so your advice is heartening.
If we lodged a complaint with Barclays, would we be taking a chance if we then removed all the money bar say £10 out of our current accounts, not use them and allowe any items to go unreported? That would possibly raise some charges but if they are Barclays responsibility we should not lose?
So far, we have had two items removed from my wife's current account and a letter from Barclays asking us to confirm that they are fraud. Nothing from them about my current account which to date has three definite fraud items.
We will take your advice about contacting the Fraud Team.
Many thanks.

dalesrider

If transactions are debiting your current account then they have to be refunded straight away under PSD. Once they are aware of them.

Enfrance

As our problems are continuing with our bank we would really like to change to another. Would we be able to join First Direct whilst being tax resident elsewhere?

zerog

No, you can only open a UK account if you are resident in the UK.

Why were you using a card in pounds when you were in a country which uses the same currency as the country you live in?? And what is wrong with a French bank account / card?

Enfrance

As I explained at the start, it was the thieves who were using our Barclays cards. Although we were carrying them with us we always use our French bank cards in Euro areas. This also made it easy to show that all of the transactions on our Barclays cards which occurred after the theft were made in Spain and were fraudulant.

Most expats keep their original UK bank account for buying things online and when visiting the UK.