Tesco Gift Card Scam

char115

Hi

I do not know if anyone has experienced this but I entered a competition on Facebook to win a £500 Tesco Gift card.  Apparently I won the gift card.  But in order to get this I had to pay £3.00 I was told that I would receive the gift card via email.  I have not received this instead I received an email from a company named Glow Tutor.  Apparently they provide online Yoga tuition and wellbeing advice.  They are saying that my card will be charged with 46Euros on the 16th of November 2023.  They have given me the option to cancel which I have but this does not start until the 28th of November.  Obviously this is a scam.  My worry is that they could take money from my account.  What can I do

Brie

Notify your bank.  That way if anything happens the bank will need to help you sort it out.  

What info did you give them?  obviously your card number, expiry and the 3 digit code on the back of the card?  What else was on the competition entry form?  

Check your credit history now, keep a copy and then check regularly for the next few months to ensure that something doesn't go on without you finding out.

mebu60

Have you called your card provider?

CliveOfIndia

Did you actually pay the £3.00?  If so, by what method?  First thing is to notify you bank or credit card provider as applicable.  Then keep an eye on your credit report, as rightly suggested by Brie.  Actually, if you paid by credit card it's probably safest to give your card provider a call (right now!) and ask them to cancel your card and issue a replacement.  That way, nothing can be charged to your "old" card.

As a more general piece of advice for the future, be extremely wary of these sorts of "offers" that you see on social media.  The vast majority are scams and should be treated as such unless you have absolute proof to the contrary.  And anything that says you need to pay a fee in order to release your prize is absolutely 100% a scam, no question.

born_again

CliveOfIndia said:

Did you actually pay the £3.00?  If so, by what method?  First thing is to notify you bank or credit card provider as applicable.  Then keep an eye on your credit report, as rightly suggested by Brie.  Actually, if you paid by credit card it's probably safest to give your card provider a call (right now!) and ask them to cancel your card and issue a replacement.  That way, nothing can be charged to your "old" card.

As a more general piece of advice for the future, be extremely wary of these sorts of "offers" that you see on social media.  The vast majority are scams and should be treated as such unless you have absolute proof to the contrary.  And anything that says you need to pay a fee in order to release your prize is absolutely 100% a scam, no question.

Except if it's a recuring transaction & then it can be transferred to new card via update service.
Wish I had a £1 for every time someone came & said this is what they had been told.

OP needs to fully explain to CC what they have done & who might or is going to be taking money & get any CPA cancelled.

CliveOfIndia

born_again said:

CliveOfIndia said:

Did you actually pay the £3.00?  If so, by what method?  First thing is to notify you bank or credit card provider as applicable.  Then keep an eye on your credit report, as rightly suggested by Brie.  Actually, if you paid by credit card it's probably safest to give your card provider a call (right now!) and ask them to cancel your card and issue a replacement.  That way, nothing can be charged to your "old" card.

As a more general piece of advice for the future, be extremely wary of these sorts of "offers" that you see on social media.  The vast majority are scams and should be treated as such unless you have absolute proof to the contrary.  And anything that says you need to pay a fee in order to release your prize is absolutely 100% a scam, no question.

Except if it's a recuring transaction & then it can be transferred to new card via update service.
Wish I had a £1 for every time someone came & said this is what they had been told.

Well speaking from personal experience I'm afraid I must disagree with you.  Just a few weeks ago my credit card got declined, then out of the blue a new card arrived through the post the next day.  I phoned the card issuer up to find out what was going on, they said they'd noticed a potential fraud on my account so had cancelled the card and issued a new one as a precaution.  I've no idea what triggered this, and I hadn't noticed anything amiss, but that's by the by - well done to the card issuer for being on the ball.

Anyhow, next thing I know I get a message from my mobile phone provider to say they'd been unable to collect this month's payment - it's set up as a recurring payment on my credit card.  So it would appear that once the card had been blocked, no more payments could be taken.  When I went online to my phone account and put the new card details in, everything was fine.  Had to also update my card details on Amazon as that also had the old card details stored.

I hope this doesn't come across as being argumentative for the sake of it - I'm just relating my personal experience

DullGreyGuy

CliveOfIndia said:

born_again said:

CliveOfIndia said:

Did you actually pay the £3.00?  If so, by what method?  First thing is to notify you bank or credit card provider as applicable.  Then keep an eye on your credit report, as rightly suggested by Brie.  Actually, if you paid by credit card it's probably safest to give your card provider a call (right now!) and ask them to cancel your card and issue a replacement.  That way, nothing can be charged to your "old" card.

As a more general piece of advice for the future, be extremely wary of these sorts of "offers" that you see on social media.  The vast majority are scams and should be treated as such unless you have absolute proof to the contrary.  And anything that says you need to pay a fee in order to release your prize is absolutely 100% a scam, no question.

Except if it's a recuring transaction & then it can be transferred to new card via update service.
Wish I had a £1 for every time someone came & said this is what they had been told.

Well speaking from personal experience I'm afraid I must disagree with you.  Just a few weeks ago my credit card got declined, then out of the blue a new card arrived through the post the next day.  I phoned the card issuer up to find out what was going on, they said they'd noticed a potential fraud on my account so had cancelled the card and issued a new one as a precaution.  I've no idea what triggered this, and I hadn't noticed anything amiss, but that's by the by - well done to the card issuer for being on the ball.

Anyhow, next thing I know I get a message from my mobile phone provider to say they'd been unable to collect this month's payment - it's set up as a recurring payment on my credit card.  So it would appear that once the card had been blocked, no more payments could be taken.  When I went online to my phone account and put the new card details in, everything was fine.  Had to also update my card details on Amazon as that also had the old card details stored.

I hope this doesn't come across as being argumentative for the sake of it - I'm just relating my personal experience

It would be standard practice to cancel a card that's been used for a fraudulent transaction as this stops future one off transactions being put through on the card. As Born_Again says, the normal approach is not to block reoccurring payments as not many merchants can put these through, those that can tend to be large corporations and it causes customers further problems rather than helps them when their car insurance is cancelled for non-payment etc 

 Given the card updater service allows merchant level blocks to be applied I cannot see any reason why a bank would choose to cause their customers more pain by blocking reoccurring transactions even if the fraud was caused by a reoccurring payment as it can be directly blocked. The tools are there if they want to do it, they can always send a V9 response to all card update quests which instructs the merchant to delete the card number and to not attempt payment. 

 Having a secondary cardholder that's a little careless with their cards and has had fraud, stolen and lost cards over the years not once have reoccurring transactions been blocked.

CliveOfIndia

DullGreyGuy said:

As Born_Again says, the normal approach is not to block reoccurring payments as not many merchants can put these through, those that can tend to be large corporations and it causes customers further problems rather than helps them when their car insurance is cancelled for non-payment etc

I will have to take you at your word on that.  All I can report is that in my case the recurring transactions were blocked when the new card was issued - which did, as you rightly point out, cause a minor inconvenience.  Maybe my card issuer was being over-cautious, I don't know, and perhaps they're the exception to the rule.

Anyhow, I have no wish to argue with anyone on this forum, and apologise if I gave misleading information

born_again

CliveOfIndia said:

I hope this doesn't come across as being argumentative for the sake of it - I'm just relating my personal experience

Not at all.👍

All I can add to that is often companies will say that, Mcafee being a prime example in emailing people unable to take funds as card expired or cancelled. People think OK don't need it anymore, then get a shock when they get debited.

Nasqueron

My Amazon subscriptions stopped working when my card was cancelled due to fraud until I updated it, my NOW TV billed normally, maybe hit and miss.

Any which way, it's better to get the card company to cancel the payments not just rely on cancelling a card and then finding out it has got charged again