MSE News: TSB current account customer? You can now earn even more cashback

colsten

SeduLOUs wrote: »

I'm not talking about 'per day'. I'm talking about standing at the till with £100 of stuff and just swiping the card 4 times.

I wasn't standing at a till with £100 worth of stuff. I went to the customer services desk and asked for 8 gift cards, each to the value of £25. I think so far you would agree that this is neither illegal nor suspicious. I could have wanted to give each of my grandchildren a £25 gift card, couldn't I.

I then told the cashier that I wanted to pay for each of the gift cards separately. Although you would probably not agree, there is nothing illegal or suspicious with that either. I could have been buying the gift cards for myself and seven of my friends, each of whom wanted to have their own receipt, couldn't I.

SeduLOUs wrote: »

so maybe next month I'll go to pay for the big shop and ask for 4 swipes of my TSB card, 4 swipes of my partner's

I am not sure this would technically work. You could, however, split your shopping yourself into less than £30 chunks and pay for each of them separately, with the same card. As this is way too much hassle for my liking, and can't be used on self-scan tills, I have opted for the gift cards (which I can also use for online purchases, at Waitrose and at John Lewis).

SeduLOUs

I didn't say you were doing anything illegal. Suspicious is in the eye of the beholder and personally if I was on a till and someone wanted to put through several contactless transactions in a row on the same card, I would certainly consider it unusual. I might let it go at the time if I wasn't sure about procedure, but would speak to a manager afterwards to find out what 'should' happen in those scenarios.

Anyway. The point is you said yourself "it's a bit scary to think that some thief could have made those purchases." so you already know there's something not quite right about it.

colsten

SeduLOUs wrote: »

The point is you said yourself "it's a bit scary to think that some thief could have made those purchases." so you already know there's something not quite right about it.

There is absolutely nothing "not quite right" about me using my card to pay 4 x £25. The scary bit is that the card provider hasn't asked for a PIN, so a thief could have made those purchases, and it would/could have been a pain for me to get my money back.

masonic

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Anyway. The point is you said yourself "it's a bit scary to think that some thief could have made those purchases." so you already know there's something not quite right about it.

What's scary is the number of transactions that have been let through without the PIN being requested. That holds whether the transactions were all made in the same place, or spread around different retailers. There's no reason to think making multiple transactions in the same place would lead to the PIN being requested less often. I've made 90% of my purchases at the same retailer and have been asked for my PIN every 4-6 transactions so far.

Thieves are highly unlikely to engage in any unusual or memorable behaviour when trying to commit their thefts. They wouldn't want to do anything out of the ordinary that drew attention to themselves.

SeduLOUs

colsten wrote: »

There is absolutely nothing "not quite right" about me using my card to pay 4 x £25. The scary bit is that the card provider hasn't asked for a PIN, so a thief could have made those purchases, and it would/could have been a pain for me to get my money back.

But how does a retailer/card issuer know whether you are you or a thief?

Yes, the terminal should have requested a PIN sooner - but this would have scuppered your cashback plan, so presumably the last thing you wanted was a PIN request when buying your gift vouchers anyway!

I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong! The only point I was making is that the limit is there for a reason - I believe that reason to be to help minimise losses on unauthorised transactions while balancing the convenience of contactless.

As you've said, the current situation could see quite a lot of money removed from your account in a very short space of time should someone get hold of your card. Whilst you'd get the money back eventually it could certainly cause problems in the short term as opposed to only missing <£30.

There are two current solutions to the problem - one is to occasionally request the PIN (which at approximately every 6th transaction already causes many complaints in this thread), and secondly to impose terms on the retailers which tell them not to process multiple contactless transactions in a row (effectively splitting a transaction) otherwise they will be liable for any chargebacks, but obviously this isn't happening.

Perhaps a better solution for everyone involved would be to only allow one contactless transaction per hour or something similar. The card could still be used with PIN in between.

colsten

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Perhaps a better solution for everyone involved would be to only allow one contactless transaction per hour or something similar.

You must be joking. An hour is an eternity. And anyway, if the transaction is below the floor limit, the card provider wouldn't know you used the card. Perhaps that's also the reason why I never got asked for a PIN - the floor limit at Waitrose could well be higher than £25.

The real solution for contactless payments IMO is Apple Pay. Perhaps TSB will eventually wake up and realise they are behind the times.

masonic

colsten wrote: »

The real solution for contactless payments IMO is Apple Pay. Perhaps TSB will eventually wake up and realise they are behind the times.

Provided they supply the necessary hardware free of charge, I'm fine with that

bellybuttonfluffman

colsten wrote: »

The real solution for contactless payments IMO is Apple Pay. Perhaps TSB will eventually wake up and realise they are behind the times.

Shouldn't be long now. http://www.tsb.co.uk/apple-pay/

veryintrigued

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Fat chance of the minimum wage staff on the checkout .

You've just painted a horrible picture of yourself.

agentk

My wife and i have 5 x cards . We did a big big shop last week as it was staff discount week 20% off.

We asked the co to split/stop at £30 and pay. we spent around £170 across 4 cards 6/7 transactions only one transaction asked for pin.

A lot of faff yes and slightly embarasing but no worse than asking them to stop as to use a store voucher ie £ off a £40 spend.I did warn customers behind :eek:

mike