British Airways £50 pending charge

philt8

For the past few months, I've been seeing regular pending payments to British Airways on my Barclaycard for £50. Each time they've just dropped off and never converted into an actual debt. A few days ago I called Barclaycard, explained the situation and they classified this as attempted fraud so cancelled my card and reissued. Roll forward a few days and now I'm seeing the same pattern happen with my American Express card - British Airways and £50 pending charge. American Express also offered to cancel my card and reissue. The person I spoke to at AMEX said he's heard of a few instances recently. Is anyone else affected? For the avoidance of doubt, I've not bought anything from British Airways directly and although I do have an account with them online, it was with a card that was also cancelled due to BA's data breach last year.

eDicky

How do British Airways explain these pending charges to cards whose details you have not (?) supplied to them..?

philt8

I haven’t spoken to BA as trying to find someone to investigate would be challenging. I haven’t ever given them these card details. They did have another but that was also cancelled due to the BA data breach.

stevenhp1987

philt8 wrote: »

I haven’t spoken to BA as trying to find someone to investigate would be challenging. I haven’t ever given them these card details. They did have another but that was also cancelled due to the BA data breach.

Give BA a call and find out. If they don't know, raise it as a formal complaint and forward them the information you've been given by your card issuers.

philt8

I spoke to BA. They wouldn't help over the phone so a complaint ticket has been raised. From the automated response, I'm not expecting a lot of action anytime soon.

18cc

I think when you cancel a card and a new one is reissued then any payments made to the old card are 'forwarded on' to the new one I may be wrong but I think that's how it works as obviously legitimate outstanding payment still have to be paid

so it may be that someone is still using your old card details and the payment is being forwarded to your new card could that be what's happening?

philt8

All the pending payments on Barclaycard were to the same card number. Now I've switched card numbers so let's see whether new pending payments come through. As for the other credit card, that's not Barclaycard, it's American Express so there'll be no forwarding going on there.

eco_warrior

Chances are it’s just a coincidence that you’ve had the same fraud on two different accounts.

Ben8282

I find this whole situation to be very odd.
If a fraudster was attempting to make purchases from British Airways
1. How come the value of each attempted purchase is exactly £50
2. If the transaction was declined, it would not come through as a pending transaction. If it was not declined, then why do BA never go ahead and submit the actual charge for whatever was purchased from them for £50?
3. What product is sold by BA that costs exactly £50?
These look like some sort of authorisation only transactions although I cant think of anything that they could be for.
Are you sure that you have never provided these credit card details to BA for any purpose whatsoever including guarantee of hotel or car rental bookings or similar which were subsequently paid by other means?
You also refer to a BA data breach. I would like to point out that even if somehow your credit card details had been obtained by fraudsters as a result of this data breach, there is no reason to suppose that such fraudsters would use the details to make transactions with BA.