Action Fraud. Ever used it?

JustAnotherSaver

Someone has set up direct debits on my bank account to pay a number of mobile phone bills. I counted off 4 different GED numbers over 2 months, 1 of which showed in both months.

Story short i've ended up sending off letters of complaint to both my bank and the mobile phone company. Mobile phone company replied today and their complaints department were in agreement with my complaint as their fraud team haven't responded to me at all in 4 weeks never mind the 10 days they were supposed to reply to me by.

In their letter they also mentioned that i can report unauthorised direct debits taken from my bank account to "Action Fraud" - actionfraud.police.uk.

Just wondered if anyone here had used that website and what happened with it, what was the outcome?

Would you go the police route in my case or just leave it with the bank?

agrinnall

I've never used it myself but I often recommend it when people post on here about fraudulent activity. While they may not be able to do anything about your particular issue if you report it and other people do the same then that allows a body of evidence to build up which can be used to take action against fraudsters.

JustAnotherSaver

Well i called the fraud dept for the second time. FINALLY i managed to get through to someone helpful who explained that this is very likely an error as it links to a long standing customer with no previous payment issues. So they may have just entered a digit or two wrong?

Got to chase this up with the bank for a refund now.

robatwork

Reported things to Actionfraud on behalf of a business on several occasions. I got an initial acknowledgment and then nothing afterwards.

I seriously doubt they were ever investigated or followed up, no queries ever came back. Would have been happy even with a "it's not worth our time to look into this" email.

They are under-resourced and a bit pointless.

wizzywig27

I once logged fraud (face to face via eBay) to them, initial email acknowledgement and that!!!8217;s it. By logging it with Action Fraud it did mean that PayPal refunded me all losses.

JustAnotherSaver

Thanks for the feedback

wizzywig27 wrote: »

that!!!8217;s it.

Why does it do this?

Emily_Joy

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback
Why does it do this?

Because it's equivalent to the reporting a fraud to the police. Similarly, the insurance company will pay for a item stolen once you provide a police report.

Reaper

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback
Why does it do this?

You mean the strange characters? It's because the forum software can only handle "straight" apostrophes/quotes.
So if I write this is works:
that's
but if you post from an iPad, copy and paste from Word or anything else that uses quotes pointing inwards or outwards it gets translated in that meaningless jumble.

DCFC79

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback
Why does it do this?

Its an annoying issue with iphones or ipads (cant remember which 1), it started when we had that issue with them spammers a month back, the spam button also went too.

d123

DCFC79 wrote: »

Its an annoying issue with iphones or ipads (cant remember which 1), it started when we had that issue with them spammers a month back, the spam button also went too.

Other people have posted that they get it even using a laptop, it's just a bug in the MSE forum software that they don't seem bothered to fix.

JustAnotherSaver

To be honest i don't think it's limited to MSE. I see it on other forums too.