Embarrassing situation but can it be sorted?

electrified2011

Ok everyone this is my current problem.
Not long ago I was on a night out with 2 mates. We ended up in a strip bar (yes cringe) although I don't remember going there. I am being absolutely truthful by saying that in my life I have done this (strip club) two maybe three times and I would possibly have spent £100 in total, its not my thing. It turns out my mates left earlier I wish I did.
Then I woke up in the morning with a blank mind and through the day had messages from the bank. It turned out to my horrorthat my credit card had been charged with over £5000 at the place.
I have no recollection of what happened. I am severely embarrassed by it all and totally ashamed. I contacted the place by email to see what had happened and I was told I authorisd all the spending by chip and pin and as it was a lot of money they took my driving licence and he does indeed have the details from it. I feel humiliated as I have been taken advantage of as I was very drunk. I have spoken to the credit card company and they are looking in to it but I don't know how they may be able to help if I had authorisd the sales.
I rarely use my credit card and the balance was around £200, it had been low for years and you could trawl every account I have held for ever and nothing like this would show.
Does anyone have any ideas what I can do? I don't have £5000 lying around. The staff in there are self employed so I guess it is well in their interest to make as much as poss so do they do things like this?
Any thoughts? And no need to tell me how stupid I am.
I'm worried about this.

meer53

Can't see the card issuer refunding you really. Could you ask your bank to have a look at converting the card balance into a loan for you ?

gardner1

that must have been one hell of a lap dance:D

jonesMUFCforever

You were drunk but were able to enter your chip and pin?
Sorry but you will IMO have to pay up.

If your credit history is good perhaps apply for a long term balance transfer card?

gardner1

electrified2011 wrote: »

Ok everyone this is my current problem.
Not long ago I was on a night out with 2 mates. We ended up in a strip bar (yes cringe) although I don't remember going there. I am being absolutely truthful by saying that in my life I have done this (strip club) two maybe three times and I would possibly have spent £100 in total, its not my thing. It turns out my mates left earlier I wish I did.
Then I woke up in the morning with a blank mind and through the day had messages from the bank. It turned out to my horrorthat my credit card had been charged with over £5000 at the place.
I have no recollection of what happened. I am severely embarrassed by it all and totally ashamed. I contacted the place by email to see what had happened and I was told I authorisd all the spending by chip and pin and as it was a lot of money they took my driving licence and he does indeed have the details from it. I feel humiliated as I have been taken advantage of as I was very drunk. I have spoken to the credit card company and they are looking in to it but I don't know how they may be able to help if I had authorisd the sales.
I rarely use my credit card and the balance was around £200, it had been low for years and you could trawl every account I have held for ever and nothing like this would show.
Does anyone have any ideas what I can do? I don't have £5000 lying around. The staff in there are self employed so I guess it is well in their interest to make as much as poss so do they do things like this?
Any thoughts? And no need to tell me how stupid I am.
I'm worried about this.

did spending £5000 get you vip status

gb12345

electrified2011 wrote: »

I was told I authorisd all the spending by chip and pin and as it was a lot of money they took my driving licence and he does indeed have the details from it.

Unfortunately, I would say you were stuffed because of the above - you would have great difficulty in proving you are a victim of fraud.

As meer says, speak to your bank and see if you can get it converted to a loan so that you can pay it off over a longer period at a lower (hopefully) APR.

Lesson to be learned - if you're going out drinking leave the card at home and take however much cash you can afford to spend with you.

SnowTiger

gardner1 wrote: »

that must have been one hell of a lap dance:D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22280755.

SueMaggie

There's a published Financial Ombudsman Case that's quite similar to this. It's on this page - scroll down to 26/5.

It says:

Credit card – authorised nightclub bills
On the last night of Mr T’s foreign holiday, he asked a taxi driver to recommend a nightclub. He arrived at the club around midnight and left at 6.00am, to catch a midday flight home. While he was at the club, it debited his credit card with nine transactions, totalling almost £1,000.

Mr T later said that he recalled arriving at the club and chatting to some "friendly young ladies", but that he had blacked out after his first drink. He subsequently came round but said that, apart from three brief incidents that he recalled very clearly, his memory of the rest of the evening was very hazy.

On his way to the airport, he realised with horror just how much the credit-card transactions added up to. He concluded that he had been the victim of fraud and thought that someone at the club must have drugged him. Because of his imminent departure, he did not report his concerns to the police at the time. But as soon as he returned to the UK he contacted the credit-card firm. When it refused to refund the disputed transactions, Mr T brought his complaint to us.

complaint rejected
The transaction slips were numbered but none of the numbers were in sequence and the disputed transactions had clearly taken place over a period of hours. Mr T appeared to have been given carbon copies of all the slips he had signed and he still had most of them. These factors together all suggested to us that the transactions were genuine.

If the club had tried to defraud him, as he claimed, we thought it unlikely that it would have done this by first drugging him (as he alleged) and by then carrying out a number of transactions on his credit card, spread over the course of six hours. And it seemed unlikely that it would have given him copies of the signed slips, all with an apparently genuine signature.

We concluded that Mr T had received the hospitality for which he had paid, and that this accounted for the haziness of his memory.

So unless you can show there's likely to have been something fraudulent going on it doesn't sound like your credit card company will be able to help you.

JakeGreen

This is a harsh one on you. Did they tell you how much the transactions were for each time?

Find out which transactions were chip and pin ones and if any were swiped transactions.

Essentially they've screwed you over, it'll be tricky to claim back the chip and pin transactions as you presumably authorised them. Unless they took your card and found out your pin.

Good luck!

electrified2011

JakeGreen - I don't remember making any transactions so I don't recall getting amounts. My finances were in the best shape for years and I was wanting to have a holiday this year but the dream is over. I might speak to the licensing board as drunk people should by law be kicked out of bars and not get kept in and get ripped off. I hope to wake up from this nightmare very soon.

Dogger69

electrified2011 wrote: »

JakeGreen - I don't remember making any transactions so I don't recall getting amounts. My finances were in the best shape for years and I was wanting to have a holiday this year but the dream is over. I might speak to the licensing board as drunk people should by law be kicked out of bars and not get kept in and get ripped off. I hope to wake up from this nightmare very soon.

What has happened is unfortunate, but is blaming someone else the answer? You're not going to move forward until you take responsibility - you got drunk, you went to the club, no one forced you to.