Someone reported my card as stolen. Not me!

thesaver79

Hi,

I got home tonight and found a brand new Halifax Clarity Credit Card in my letterbox. I called Halifax and they say that they sent me a new one because I called last week to report my card as stolen. Therefore the existing card was blocked and they issued a new one

How the hell is that possible? I immediately thought of a mistake and someone reported my card number rather than theirs, but the guy on the phone was adamant that it's virtually impossible for that to happen. He also said that the security you have to go through when reporting a card as lost is also very limited.

Anyway, I asked if they could investigate and listen to the phone call, and they say I need to send them a written request.

meer53

Halifax stopped my card too without telling me. I found out when i tried to use it in the ATM and it was swallowed. They're useless, they couldn't tell me why it had been stopped. It's usually a case of them stopping the wrong card by mistake.

paulineb_2

Someone also reported my card as lost and it was blocked.

thesaver79

paulineb wrote: »

Someone also reported my card as lost and it was blocked.

I guess you never found out what happened? How recently was that?

Usa2012

Happened to a friend of mine, and it turned out her now ex flat mate has posed as her in order to hopefully receive a card she could access to spend on. Her flat mate was usually home in the mornings to pick up post.

eddddy

I can confirm that it's not too difficult to stop other peoples cards.

My daughter had her credit cards stolen in South America. She emailed me asking me to contact the banks to stop the cards - as making calls to the UK was very difficult.

I phoned the banks and explained the situation. All of them agreed to cancel the cards, without any kind of security checks to ascertain who I was. (And I could have been a prankster/fraudster making it all up.)

magpiecottage

thesaver79 wrote: »

Anyway, I asked if they could investigate and listen to the phone call, and they say I need to send them a written request.

Maybe - but you don't need to make a written complaint that your card was cancelled without contact from you because the FCA rules say you don't.

They have to investigate all complaints..

meer53

I don't see the point in listening to any calls, the card was stopped, it's not going to change anything.

It's easy to stop the wrong card by mistake, it's probably just human error. Someone else will have called to stop their card and yours has been stopped by mistake. When it happened to me, Halifax couldn't explain how my card had been stopped, there's no point finding out, what do you need to know for ?

ecraig

I used to work in a shop and Customers often left their cards behind... One day I thought I was being helpful by calling the number on the back of the card and explained that the customer left it in the store and I could place it in a locked safe. I then asked if the bank could call the customer and let them know that i had put it in the safe for their later collection. "No" was the answer followed by - "we will cancel it and put a replacement in the post".

meer53

ecraig wrote: »

I used to work in a shop and Customers often left their cards behind... One day I thought I was being helpful by calling the number on the back of the card and explained that the customer left it in the store and I could place it in a locked safe. I then asked if the bank could call the customer and let them know that i had put it in the safe for their later collection. "No" was the answer followed by - "we will cancel it and put a replacement in the post".

Thats the correct procedure.

cos_2

It's a bit like online banking where some sites will suspend your account after three failed login attempts.

I used to have an account with Tesco and ended up doing just that. However, when I went through the recover username/password process, it turned out my username wasn't the one I'd tried. I blocked someone else's account!