Rights regarding return of fraudulently taken money?

johnisworried

Hi all,

I am currently travelling around Europe and have just discovered that a currency card I was using has had all the money wiped off the balance through point of sale or ATM transactions. This happened in the USA, yet the card has never left my possession.

I told the card issuer immediately, and asked for the immediate return of the cash as I need it for my travels and am otherwise skint.

What right do I have here? I have already had to travel back from Sweden to my home in the UK and disrupted my Euro travels because I am waiting for my money to be returned to me. I told them on Friday about this urgency, emailed several times, spoke to them on the phone, and still nothing.

Don't I have a right to an immediate return if I have not compromised my cards security in any way.

It was a chip and in card btw.

:0

grumbler

Well, don't take my word for this, but what I can find online is:

The main disadvantages of a prepaid card are:

• Some cards may offer less protection than others. Cardholders should refer to the terms and conditions to confirm the level of protection and any liability.
• ...
• There is no fraud protection from your card issuer, so any money used in a fraudulent transaction will not be reimbursed.

http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/individual/Why-prepaid-card.asp

dzug1

Not quite sure how you expect them to return the money immediately - the only way of doing that is to the compromised card which doesn't seem a good idea

johnisworried

Surely they have to be liable if they don't protect your money?

System

johnisworried wrote: »

Surely they have to be liable if they don't protect your money?

As are you. Can you categorically state that every time that you used your card that there was no-one who was in a position to see you enter your pin or that your card was always in your sight?

The majority of card fraud is caused by a failure of personal security rather than corporate security.

johnisworried

Are pin numbers recorded on the actual credit cards?

grumbler

What does 'recorded' mean?
They are saved in a chip, but impossible to read/extract. The chip just says whether the pin one enters is correct or not and auto-blocks after several unsuccessful attempts.

Most likely your card was 'skimmed' in an ATM or some other place, PIN was either 'overlooked' or recorded by a small camera, and then the card was cloned. The chip is impossible to clone, so the new card was with a strip only. It worked in USA as AFAIK chips are not common there. This can be your main point when arguing that a card should have never been authorised for non chip&pin ATM transactions.

System

grumbler wrote: »

This can be your main point when arguing that a card should have never been authorised for non chip&pin ATM transactions.

If it was skimmed then they probably know how to set up the clone without a chip anyway.
Since non-chip US cards work here in ATMs then lack of chip makes no difference.

grumbler

!!!!!! wrote: »

...
Since non-chip US cards work here in ATMs then lack of chip makes no difference.

Really?
All ATMs are online.
For each card number the information is easily available whether it's chip&pin card or not.
If the chip is missing (or damaged) it's easy to reject the card.

System

Since chip & pin are only just being rolled out in the U.S. they are not widely supported even by bank ATMs. Also retailers in the USA do not yet have the technology to use chip & Pin so it is still signature

johnisworried

If the pin is recorded on the chip and US bank ATMs/POS cannot read chips then how do they verify the pin?