Nationwide Credit Card Fraudsters.....Help !!

Mr_Chris77

I'm looking for help and direction as I am at my witts end....
I'll try to be brief, but give as much detail without boring you.

A couple of years ago I was selling a house in Florida. It was a bit of a slow market & the house needed some finishings, carpets & tiling to name two. Not practice over here, but over there you can offer " buyer incentives". In my case, it was $1500 towards the aforementioned. A couple came along, it was their second marriage & were limited on funds to buy a house. They liked our place & got pre-qualified. After a mortgage inspection, they were advised that carpet and tile would have to be in place before we could 'close' on the sale and their funds released. So they went out and picked their carpets and tile from a supplier who would do the whole package. The total cost of the carpets etc was circa $7500. I agreed to pay the supplier the $1500 over the phone ( i'm in UK) & this would fulfil my obligation. Everything went OK with the sale etc. job done.
However, about two months later, there's another transaction on my credit card for another $3500. Nationwide never called me to ascertain whether it was genuine, but I notified them immediately of the fraud. Firstly they said it wasn’t fraud, then they said it was, then they reverted back and said it wasn’t. They processed it as a chargeback. It didn’t end there, they received some bogus paperwork which I couldn’t contest, other than my word it was fraud, because I had nothing to do with sourcing the finishings & instructing the firm to install, therefore i had no paperwork to prove to the contrary. The supplier had kept my credit card details & used them a second time without my concent. The ombudsman was just as naive to the fraud & two years down the line, Nationwide credit card have instructed debt collectors to recover the money from me. I've been a customer with Nationwide for some 30 years and cannot understand why they won’t believe me. I really want to seek help from a solicitor, but they charge soo much.

Ben8282

If you wanted to offer the buyer an incentive, surely a discount equal to the value of the incentive would have sufficed.
I have never heard of a mortgage being declined due to lack of some carpets and tiles.
I also wonder at the sense of agreeing to buy the carpets and tiles before exchanging contracts (or whatever the US equivalent is) or at least getting some sort of non-refundable deposit to cover the cost of what you were spending.
If you were in the UK, doing everything by phone, how do you KNOW that you spoke to a real supplier. Who suggested using this supplier; you or the buyer?
If the supplier was reputable, it is unlikely that they would have done as you claim unless of course it was some sort of misunderstanding. After all, if it was YOU who phoned them to place the order and YOU who paid the original amount (deposit?) then it would not have been an unreasonable assumption on the part of the supplier that YOU would be paying the balance? on completion of the work?. What arrangement did you make on the phone regarding payment of the balance? Somehow if I ordered something and paid the deposit, I don't think the company would have accepted to complete the work on the understanding that a potential future buyer for the property would be responsible for paying them.
You say that the supplier defended the dispute by providing bogus paperwork that you were unable to content. What was the exact nature of this bogus paperwork and why exactly were you unable to contest it?

bris

Sounds to me like you got yourself involved in a 3 way contract with the supplier and the buyers. The buyers must have failed to pay the 3500 dollars so it was taken from the original source of payment.


Very difficult to now prove fraud as you have now found out.

PeacefulWaters

Anyway, you complain to Nationwide telling them it's an unauthorised transaction. If you don't like their response you complain to the Financial Ombudsman service.

If, on the balance of probabilities, the FOS agree that you didn't authorise the transaction they'll order Nationwide to reimburse.

Your final option if the FOS back the lender and not you is to issue a MCOL and see what the courts say.