Can't stop Credit Card payments to fraudulent account(s)

jonesMUFCforever

The only thing I can think of here is that a 'pending' transaction cannot be stopped - only completed ones can be disputed and of course a customer can always cancel a CPA.

whydotheydothat

jonesMUFCforever said:

The only thing I can think of here is that a 'pending' transaction cannot be stopped - only completed ones can be disputed and of course a customer can always cancel a CPA.

That's something I don't understand because; The very first two transactions were highlighted to me by the bank. They were in pending and they identified them as "suspicious tester transactions (£1 each)" which I confirmed. They had already "declined" them but since then I've had 5 more which have been paid and refunded.

whydotheydothat

The FCA say that banks are known to avoid customer's cancellations.
I suppose the bigger question is;-
Why don't the banks take the easy option of accepting the customer's cancellation rather than having to contact the retailers, claim back money and make charges/refunds etc?
There must be a good reason for this?

Sandtree

whydotheydothat said:

There must be a good reason for this?

I cannot answer this question in particular but my experience of banking is that the whole thing is generally weird and very slow to change (somewhat understandable given the volume of transactions and the cost of therefore getting it wrong).

Many moons ago I had the joy of putting “card updater” in place for an insurance company owned by a bank which is all connected to CPAs. There was a massive amount of noise from our sister company how the deadline to do it was two years ago and its an embarrassment that their own sister company wasnt using it yet etc etc... well after a major mess up it came to light that whilst it was indeed 2 years over due we were only the second user outside of their SME business to actually have implemented it and the other was a modest book subscription club.

born_again

whydotheydothat said:

The FCA say that banks are known to avoid customer's cancellations.
I suppose the bigger question is;-
Why don't the banks take the easy option of accepting the customer's cancellation rather than having to contact the retailers, claim back money and make charges/refunds etc?
There must be a good reason for this?

Banks do not contact the co's as such. 
Anything like this is done via Visa/mastercard systems. It just type in card no & a couple of clicks on the system Visa supply. We  believe Mastercard is just the same.
Retailer simply gets a message saying it is cancelled. But I have known some ignore them, but if they do they not only lose the money, but get charged for the privilege of losing the money.

TBH. If the bank is reporting them as fraud, then the ball is fully in the retailers court. Who is it, no skin off their nose to name them.

The biggest issue is not the banks, it is the likes of Visa/Mastercard and the systems they supply to do the cancelations. These are who the regulators really need to put the pressure on.

whydotheydothat

Sandtree said:

whydotheydothat said:

I LOVE Forums . The best thing on the internet. There's always someone out there to help.
Several weeks and dozen phone calls and the bank kept on saying that I couldn't do this 

Does this mean they’ve changed their tune?

I now know what the expression "talking to a brick wall" means!

I've just spent half an hour taking to the bank's complaints dept.

I read out the wording from the FCA's website, repeating that the bank must cancel immediately and that it doesn't matter if it's called a CPA etc etc.

No matter what I said, the response was always, " we can only ask the retailer, we cannot stop payments......"

After losing the will to live, I agreed that when they send the final complaint closure statement, I may refer to the Financial Ombudsman. Which is something I've done before and was impressed by the easy of the process.

jsmith9

I wonder if that is the way it is done by everybody ie no credit card can physically stop the payment request but once it hits your card they reverse it? I don't know if this is how they do it.

You could I suppose ask another credit card company (if you have one) and ask them how they would do it?