What to do when the fraud squad sides with the fraudster? [Amex]

DullGreyGuy

B0bbyEwing said:

400ixl said:

As people have told you.

Next step is to raise a formal complaint with Amex. If the result of that is not to your liking, then you can take it to the Ombudsman for an external view.

You'll have to forgive me for checking because it wasn't a case of "as people have told you" since I was told different things - hence wanting to check what is correct. 

Complaints was one, ombudsman was another. 

You may say the ombudsman was on the basis of a "final decision" but is that what I have now or to repeat the process & then maybe that one is the final one.... Again, hence the question. 

Anyway, I'll go the complaints route. 

Thanks. 

The final response/ deadlock letter to a complaint from a regulated company legally must inform you of your right to go to the ombudsman. It will also clearly be a templated letter with a first section saying what your complaint is, the second section stating their position and why and the final section informing you of the FOS rights. 

You can only go to the ombudsman either after receiving the final response or 8 weeks have passed since your made the complaint, whichever happens first. 


If you attempt to complain to the ombudsman before you are entitled to the ombudsman will simply forward it to the company and ask them to look at it. I would strongly recommend against this and especially if you are contacting the FOS over the phone... they also send a templated letter and have to summaries your complaint into circa 30 words in the middle of the template. Inevitably summarising a 15 minute conversation into 30 words is hard and it often lacks detail and sometimes is totally the wrong end of the stick. 

Logging your complaint directly is much better, in writing (eg email) better than on the phone (or probably live chat), you should stick to the facts, be clear what outcome you want and avoid excessive emotive language. Brevity is good, I have had to read a 35 page complaint letter, but not to the extent of just 30 words. 

born_again

B0bbyEwing said:

As per some previous threads on here...

Someone got access to my account, used it, I contacted Amex & got the money back.
FFWD some weeks/couple month (I forget the duration) and it happened again. Turned out to be a subscription - so 2 payments before I noticed.

Raised this with Amex, told me to contact their fraud dept, they refunded me pending investigation. 
Investigation got resolved .... they found the payments to be legit so reversed the refunds.

This is a load of nonsense. Never heard of the company in my life & nobody else had access to the card - so total fraud. Especially so when I contacted the company & they gave me partial info to who took out the subscription and I didn't recognise the email at all. Even the email provider I couldn't make out (as in it wasn't gmail.com for example - so they'd have provided something like g***l.c*m which could've easily been sussed - but it wasn't that).

I've contacted Amex again who've told me to go back to their fraud dept. 

Now this may or may not be procedure. I feel like I'm being given the run around though.

Once an investigation is decided on & you don't agree with it, who do you go to? Back to that same department?

Let's say their decision is to uphold their decision. Who do you go to then? I would imagine it'd be some organisation outside of the one you're dealing with (so not Amex in this case, someone else)? As you can tell I have no idea what to do with this.

Someone will probably ask the amounts. 2x £13. 
To which some would say they couldn't be bothered for that amount. 
The amount is irrelevant to me. I'd be doing this for a £5 charge just the same. I didn't make the payments so I don't see why I should accept them.

I would've thought they could do things like ip checks & contact the website themselves to determine the billing probably wasn't from the UK & since I haven't left the UK in nearly 20 years then it can't be me.

But yeah to stick to the point - how do I go about challenging this? And if the answer is do as Amex say then where do I go once/if their fraud dept uphold their original decision?

They will they chargeback the amount from the retailer. Who will then provide them wit hthe account details if they want to contest it.

If you want to challenge it then raise a complaint with Amex. If they still say it is you, then you can go to FOS.

@p00hsticks
American companies are much freer with customer details. Spoken to them many times & got all sorts of customer data. Best are the adult related sites people deny using. You can get their username etc.. Suffice to say repeating would get me banned on here..
You can just tell when you mention that to the customer, that it is them 🤦‍♀️

B0bbyEwing

Just putting my complaint letter together now. I contacted the merchant twice who gave me the fraudsters email twice but with different characters censored out each time. From that I've managed to piece together a chunk of their email address.

maiho*iba*sv3990*6s8k9@cha*m*odot.us*

Going to guess the .us is .usa so hazarding a guess that it was America that this came from. What sort of supplier is that? I thought pretty much everyone went with Gmail these days. I guess not.

Nasqueron

B0bbyEwing said:

Just putting my complaint letter together now. I contacted the merchant twice who gave me the fraudsters email twice but with different characters censored out each time. From that I've managed to piece together a chunk of their email address.

maiho*iba*sv3990*6s8k9@cha*m*odot.us*

Going to guess the .us is .usa so hazarding a guess that it was America that this came from. What sort of supplier is that? I thought pretty much everyone went with Gmail these days. I guess not.

The US top level domain is .us, I don't think there is a .usa from looking at the registers

Businesses wouldn't commonly use a gmail account, maybe small traders, it could be a faked address anyway

B0bbyEwing

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

I just realised I gave them no time frame. Not sure if I was supposed to specify or whether it's specified by default.

My letter is dated 15th Feb, I posted it 16th Feb, it'll have been collected with 17th Feb's post collection. I only had a 2nd class stamp available.

grumpy_codger

B0bbyEwing said:

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

.....

grumpy_codger said:

..., see https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/how-to-complain

...............

B0bbyEwing

grumpy_codger said:

B0bbyEwing said:

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

.....

grumpy_codger said:

..., see https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/how-to-complain

...............

8 weeks then. 

To be honest, I hadn't checked out the link for the simple fact of it can't be forwarded to the ombudsman yet. Should I need to go that far then that's when I'd have clicked the link. 

But thanks. 

born_again

B0bbyEwing said:

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

I just realised I gave them no time frame. Not sure if I was supposed to specify or whether it's specified by default.

My letter is dated 15th Feb, I posted it 16th Feb, it'll have been collected with 17th Feb's post collection. I only had a 2nd class stamp available.

You will be lucky if it has even been picked up by anyone yet.

Way letters work is.
Received in mail room from RM. Is then scanned onto system, once all sorted. Will then be sent to dept to deal (hope it had all the account details etc, or it could be bounced round many depts before getting to correct one). It is then sat in a queue, waiting for someone to pick up & start working the case.
Which is why it is always quicker to phone & raise a complaint. As timescale starts at that point.

Nasqueron

born_again said:

B0bbyEwing said:

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

I just realised I gave them no time frame. Not sure if I was supposed to specify or whether it's specified by default.

My letter is dated 15th Feb, I posted it 16th Feb, it'll have been collected with 17th Feb's post collection. I only had a 2nd class stamp available.

You will be lucky if it has even been picked up by anyone yet.

Way letters work is.
Received in mail room from RM. Is then scanned onto system, once all sorted. Will then be sent to dept to deal (hope it had all the account details etc, or it could be bounced round many depts before getting to correct one). It is then sat in a queue, waiting for someone to pick up & start working the case.
Which is why it is always quicker to phone & raise a complaint. As timescale starts at that point.

Timescale starts 2 working days after posting if first class, it's considered delivered by then legally. 

You can do it just as easily via email / web complaints form or even chat bot in some cases, rather than ringing and waiting in a queue

B0bbyEwing

born_again said:

B0bbyEwing said:

Sorry if it's been mentioned. If so then I've just missed it.

But how long do they have to respond before you get in touch with the ombudsman?

I just realised I gave them no time frame. Not sure if I was supposed to specify or whether it's specified by default.

My letter is dated 15th Feb, I posted it 16th Feb, it'll have been collected with 17th Feb's post collection. I only had a 2nd class stamp available.

You will be lucky if it has even been picked up by anyone yet.

Way letters work is.
Received in mail room from RM. Is then scanned onto system, once all sorted. Will then be sent to dept to deal (hope it had all the account details etc, or it could be bounced round many depts before getting to correct one). It is then sat in a queue, waiting for someone to pick up & start working the case.
Which is why it is always quicker to phone & raise a complaint. As timescale starts at that point.

I wasn't asking in the sense of being impatient & expecting it to be resolved by now. I was more asking out of just gathering information.

I also hate talking on the phone. If you think I put my words across poorly in writing then you should see my try it verbally. For me to do it over the phone it has to literally be the only option available.