Contactless Fraud - Bank Won't Refund

mattwilkinson

Gerry1 said:

Could the card have been borrowed and returned without your knowledge, e.g. if left unattended in a jacket on the back of a chair in an office?

The location shown on the statement doesn't always match that of the transaction, e.g. if it's the company HQ.  I don't know whether this extends to overseas locations, but perhaps it's not impossible for multinational companies.

Just another good reason to avoid contactless cards.  With an uncooperative bank it's usually possible to disable the contactless facility using a paper punch to make a hole on the centre line immediately above the last digit of the long number.

No - the card was in my wallet on the dressing table about 3 feet away from me when the transactions took place (00:53 - when I was fast asleep!)

nyermen

This is indeed odd, as noted they wont go to this effort, the chips are very difficult to clone.
Are we sure its contactless?  The type of payment is often shown as 3 digits on statements, just wondering if its been misread eg. by the person spoken to at the bank.  eg. for me, HSBC uses 3 brackets "(((" to represent contactless (including Apple Pay).  It may be different for other banks (and indeed on internal systems vs customer statements).

MattMattMattUK

Terry_Towelling said:

Chino said:

Gerry1 said:

Just another good reason to avoid contactless cards.

Hardly. A merchant who is able to submit a fake contactless transaction could just as easily submit a fake PIN-verified contact transaction.

You know this for a fact, do you? Maybe you are just guessing.

Neither is technically difficult, both can be done with equipment that is available online for less than £50. The slightly harder part of a PIN verified transaction is obtaining the pin, but with cameras that is not particularly difficult. 

phillw

mattwilkinson said:
No - the card was in my wallet on the dressing table about 3 feet away from me when the transactions took place (00:53 - when I was fast asleep!)

Is that the time the transactions were made, or when they were submitted?
Some transactions get sent through "offline" in batch mode at the end of the day. Offline transactions should appear within a week, but I'm not sure if there is a maximum cut off date if there was a fault.

Assuming you haven't been to Greece, you should easily be able to prove you were unable to make a contactless payment in another country.

You just need to tell your bank you want to raise a complaint, if they still refuse then ask for a dead lock letter for the ombudsman. If they just ignore you for 28 days then you can just go to the ombudsman anyway.

MattMattMattUK

nyermen said:

This is indeed odd, as noted they wont go to this effort, the chips are very difficult to clone.

Cloning a contactless card is pretty easy for anyone with mild level of technical ability, the kit is available online for less than £50 and you can even do it with a routed Android phone if you have direct access to the card, with more advanced kit allowing you to do it at a distance. Chips for Chip and PIN are reasonably easy to clone onto blank cards, I could not write the software, but I could use the software for example, but it does require direct physical access to the card and also knowledge of the PIN. 

mattwilkinson

nyermen said:

This is indeed odd, as noted they wont go to this effort, the chips are very difficult to clone.
Are we sure its contactless?  The type of payment is often shown as 3 digits on statements, just wondering if its been misread eg. by the person spoken to at the bank.  eg. for me, HSBC uses 3 brackets "(((" to represent contactless (including Apple Pay).  It may be different for other banks (and indeed on internal systems vs customer statements).

the transaction is stated as 'contactless' - but I've only got their word for it

Neil49

First question for the OP is, have you ever been to Crete since you got your Starling card? 

mattwilkinson

Neil49 said:

First question for the OP is, have you ever been to Crete since you got your Starling card? 

Yes I have back in August, so if it was something I genuinely used my card for it should have shown up by now!

Neil49

mattwilkinson said:

Neil49 said:

First question for the OP is, have you ever been to Crete since you got your Starling card? 

Yes I have back in August, so if it was something I genuinely used my card for it should have shown up by now!

Not necessarily! I've experienced the same issue with my Monzo card in Canterbury when I got an overnight charge for car parking when I was home in bed in Worcester. 

Canterbury Council were very efficient in identifying the transaction and confirmed that it was for when I had parked there a month earlier. The original contactless transaction hadn't gone through so was eventually processed as part of an overnight batch transaction with a number of other failed transactions. 

Think back to what you used your card for while there. Best of luck. I'd forgotten that I'd parked twice in Canterbury which threw me! 

born_again

MattMattMattUK said:

nyermen said:

This is indeed odd, as noted they wont go to this effort, the chips are very difficult to clone.

Cloning a contactless card is pretty easy for anyone with mild level of technical ability, the kit is available online for less than £50 and you can even do it with a routed Android phone if you have direct access to the card, with more advanced kit allowing you to do it at a distance. Chips for Chip and PIN are reasonably easy to clone onto blank cards, I could not write the software, but I could use the software for example, but it does require direct physical access to the card and also knowledge of the PIN. 

If it was so easy, why do we not see contactless fraud, other than when a card is stolen in the UK.
A  lot of the stuff on the internet is based on US system, which is different to UK.
In over 10 years we have never seen a cloned contactless card fraud case.