Pre-paid Euro Card Stolen

szam_

Morning,

Wasn't sure where to put this as I can't see a specific forum for it. I ordered a pre-paid card ahead of a holiday next month. Loaded it with £1000 (1221 euros).

I haven't actually received the card, but this morning had an email with a number of transactions totaling the entire amount on the card. Luckily all these have been declined as the card isn't active yet. Someone must have stolen it as we have communal mailboxes in our building, and it's been known some things to be stolen from here, mailboxes torn off the wall and damaged etc (I need to move, I know). There's a small minority in the building who are very unsavory characters, drug addicts and alcoholics with no regard for the building or anyone in it.

Anyhow, I'm wondering if I involve the police. The attempted theft of £1000 isn't something I'm happy about and since I'm out at work from 9am till 5:30pm so it's not like I can keep checking the mail. On top of this, I'm sure other mail is being stolen as I've been waiting for an important letter for a while now.

FairFX have refused to send it to my work address, which means I've got to get lucky and hope whoever it is stealing it (I presume, checking all the letters to see if any are valuable) doesn't get to it before I do.

Should I involve the police? They can easily trace the transactions back with the help of the companies who have declined the payments and the card issuer, but will they deem it worth it and actually investigate it properly? It may also prevent others from having their debit/credit/pre-paid cards stolen too.

grumbler

szam_ wrote: »

Should I involve the police?

Sure you have. It's theft (=crime), i.e. their business. Be persistent if you do it in a station and they try fobbing you off.

szam_

Thanks.

I have called Royal Mail and the police.

Royal mail didn't want to know, the police were a bit dubious until I told them that I'd received a log of transactions attempted on the card with dates and times, which can be traced back (hopefully) to whoever tried to make them.

System

Can you not get it sent to a relative or friend's address? I do this with anything that won't fit in my letter box like Amazon orders.

Otherwise, you'll just need to risk it or ask FairFx to refund the balance.

StuC75

Or can you not get it delivered with no balance, and then load up once you are in safe receipt?

szam_

Heng_Leng wrote: »

Can you not get it sent to a relative or friend's address? I do this with anything that won't fit in my letter box like Amazon orders.

Otherwise, you'll just need to risk it or ask FairFx to refund the balance.

I made this request this to them when I rang this morning, but they refuse to send it anywhere but the place of residence - the police agreed with me that it's a stupid policy if the card has been stolen the first time and I proved it was myself that ordered the card.

In regards to ordering the card and loading it later, I was trying to avoid the £4.95 or however much it is to get a new card, I probably should have done the minimum spend to order the card in hindsight and taken the hit, but at the same time, it doesn't give someone a right to help themselves to your post (I think it's a wider issue, we haven't had any post all week) and then try and spend money that doesn't belong to you - thankfully FairFX seem to have a good security procedure in place before you can use the card.

The police seem to want to work with me in tracing who it was (by coincidence, I actually work in an industry that will actually help me guide them to the culprit quicker, I understand and know about all the payments processes) - I'm not one to lie down and let someone get away with something, even if it is just 'attempted' theft, the intention was there.

scott_lithgows

Pay for a redirection of your mail ?