Victim of Debit Card Fraud - Advice Please!!

kanjoose_one

Hello,

I've recently been a victim of Switch card fraud and want some advice.

I have a Student Account with the Royal Bank of Scotland and back in May I noticed several transactions paid out to "william hill" and "ladbrokes" (both of which are bookies).These were all done over the phone or on the net.

In total there was 9 transactions over a three week period ranging from £50 to £200 so in total £1200 was taken (this was throughout April).

Now I'm not a very good MSE so didnt (I sure do now) check my statements regularly so when I first noticed the mpney was missing was 3 weeks after the first fraudulant transaction. (note this was the first week of may).

I immediately contact the police who took down details and issued me with a "log ref number" so I could pass this onto my bank so that they could liais with the Police in due course.

At the same time I rang my branch to cancel the switch card and inform them on what happened. I followed this up with a letter the same day.At this poiint I also gave them the Police ref number.

The branch said this would be passed onto the RBS fraud dept who would be in touch with me soon. So 10 days later i received a letter from this fraud team asking me to state which transactions were fraudulant and sign a declaration to say so. So i sent this off.

Right when I rang this fraud dept a few days later to see if they had received the signed form they said yes and they would contact their head office to arrange a refund - All seems to be going well now.

I ring the next day re refund and they now said before they could authorise a refund they would have to get some details from the companies in question (ie william hill and ladbrokes).

Now this was the middle of May - for the next 3/4 weeks I rang nearly everyday and was told "they were investigating and sorry they couldnt say anymore". I also sent several faxes to this dept asking for them to send me in writing something ie what their postition was and what they are actually doing.

Now nearly a month later when I called again, I was now told that because my case is rather complicated it would be passed to their head office in edinburgh who have investigative powers & was asked for the police details again which I gave to the fraud team who said he would pass it on to the team in edinbrugh (note I already prov these police details when I reported the matter initially.)

SO we're now in June and the Head office in edinburgh are looking into things (also I cant contact these people directly as they arnt "customer facing"). Again 3/4 weeks passed with me calling the fraud team every couiple of days to see if they could call their HO to get an update. All i was told was that "they are investigating".

Not 3 weeks ago I got a letter from RBS head office to say can you give us the police details again so we can liais with them. I wrote back to say ok heres the details but Ive already givern them to you twice before now and its a little dissapointing that nearly three months after I reported the matter to you, you are now approacing the police.

And the status at the minute is, that the police are going to get in touch with RBS at the end of aug so there should be more information for me then.

Right I know fraud is a serious and complex thing but its been 14 weeks since i first reported the matter and still it hasnt been resolved.IS this normal? I have also been charged nearly £100 in fees and interest and I've had to borrow money from friends to make sure I dont go over my overdraft limit.

Either the bank beleives ive been negligent with the use of my card (which is def not the case) OR even worse they think IVe been part to this fraud.

Sorry about the long post but can anyone suggest who I can write to complain to. Ive written to my branch who said they will pass on my letter to the relevent people (this was 5 weeks back). Ive faxed various letters to the specialised fraud dept and I've also written to the Head office in edinburgh who are now dealing with the issue.

I must have made over 100 phone calls in these three months, sent several letters and faxes and to be honest I'm just real tired and want to forget about the whole thing however I know if I dont keep pushing them they just wont give a damn.

Any suggestions? Again sorry about the long post (And my gram and spelling errors) and thanks for taking the time to read this.

kanjoose_one

Sorry just a quick note. The head office in edinburgh who are dealing with the case now are only the "fraud head office" not the actual cust services head office or RBS HO

danrees

I had pretty much exactly the same experience, coincidentally with Royal Bank of Scotland student account and Stan James (another online betting agency). I got my money bank in the end, but was also quite annoyed with the way they handled it.

I would say to the bank (customer services) that you expect any unauthorised overdraft interest or charges to be waived until the matter is resolved. You should not be paying because they are too slow to investigate the matter! If they do not co-operate then tell them you will making an official complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.

Having gone through this myself, I know that you have absolutely no responsibility for any of these transactions unless you have lost your card and not reported it stolen. See section 12.12 of the Banking Code. It is RBS' responsibility to ensure that debit transactions are not processed without appropriate security checks, one of which is the three-digit security code on the back of your card which nobody should have access to without the card being in front of them.

danrees

I should also add that I promptly left RBS and signed up for Smile student account instead!

lipidicman

danrees wrote:

the three-digit security code on the back of your card which nobody should have access to without the card being in front of them......

....or if they have ever seen the card. How hard is it to write this down whilst you are cloning the card? The banks don't take security seriously. Take chip and pin cards that have the fallback option to use the much weaker magstripe still. Fallback for lazy shopkeepers, or criminals? What a joke!

coolsteel

Yes some people are totally thick at times, my daughter works in leisure and a chap was buying something and went somewhere for a couple of mins so he gave her his card AND pin number and said " I trust you " now how thick is that! needless to say she IS trustworthy but I ask ya.
PS not that im implying anyone on here hasn't looked after their card but that chap will come unstuck one day.
Coolsteel :cool:

CopperPlate_2

I really appreciate that losing that sum of money from your account is enough to turn your hair white overnight and cause you to panic. You seem to have done all the right things in reporting it to the bank/Police, etc.

My only point is that you appear to have got yourself into a real state about this and perhaps some of it might have been your own doing - I'm speaking about the feeling that nothing is being done, not the fraud itself before you say

Three months might seem like a long time - where fraud is concerned, if the bank wants to find out who is responsible or be in a position to pass a reasonable package of "evidence" across to the Police, they have to make enquiries and investigate it thoroughly beforehand if there is any hope of catching the perpetrators and having it stand up in court.

Banks are victims of fraud in loads of ways - much as we might think that they have bottomless pockets to pay for these thefts, they don't and they can't simply afford to recompensate anyone that reports a fraud/theft without checking it out beforehand. They'd go out of business quick enough, or charge us all exorbitant fees/charges/penalties just to be a customer

Three months seems a long time to wait for the money back (I had a similar experience with Bank of Scotland and Barclays a few years ago, and the money took about 6 weeks to be paid back).

The confusion regarding passing on the Police reference numbers might be something to do with the fact that you are speaking to different people each time you phone? If, as you said, you've phoned about a hundred times (over the three months), that works out to be roughly once a day! The bank will have countless other customers in the same boat as you - can you imagine if they all started phoning every day to see what the progress of their complaint was? No work would get done! Phoning a company never seems to get you anywhere - there's always someone on the other end of the line ready to pass the buck and blame inefficiency on the last person you spoke to.

I'd suggest writing a letter to their head or director of customer service at their HO at The Mound. Enclose a copy of the disputed transactions form you signed (if you kept a copy) and cross-refer it to any bank reference you were given. Detail the date you reported the incident and a very brief resume of the main points, i.e. when it happened, who you reported it to, a further twice asked for information, and nothing since whatever date. I'd add in the difficulties you have been placed under due to the lack of funds, etc. and the fact that you expect the charges, etc to be waived.

Be polite, concise and don't get emotional.

If you're worried that your spelling/grammar might let you down, ask a pal to have a read over it before you send it. That way, they can pick up on the above, or any bits that they think you should leave out (!) or add in if you've forgotten. I'd say it shouldn't run to any more than a page or page and a half MAXIMUM.

Don't get into a rant, and be clear about what you want.

Once you've got your cash, dump them.

I'd also be inclined to check your credit file with Experian or Equifax to see if you've got any more 'unknowns' lurking about that you don't know about yet.

Aside from it all, I hope you manage to make some headway with it - being student is hard enough without some bxxxxxd nicking all your cash too.

CP

kanjoose_one

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply. I think the best course of action is to write to their Cust Services Head Office and in the meantime hope that the banks investigtions conclude sooner rather than later.

denys

Kanjoose_one,

I had a similar situation back in 2000 with NatWest (part of RBS).
Purely bank’s mistake - my debit card for a new account was sent to a wrong address and someone spent around £750 of that accounts’ overdraft. (They used to send already activated cards back then.) I had to go to the police to get a crime reference and fill all those “fraudulent transaction” forms. I continued to use the account and incur interest and overlimit charges as was assured that all of these will be refunded. It took them around three months and a formal complain to refund the money, but they did it along with a very generous goodwill payment.

So write a formal complain if you did not do it already and take it easy. There is no need to go to extremes and borrow money off third parties to stay within your overdraft limit. Consider your balance as being current + value of fraudulent transactions - all relevant charges.

suniil

Natwest natwest!!! again :mad:

In july 2004 they sent me a pre-activated card and courier person dropped the same thru letter box and took by somebody else (SE London ). £5000 fradulent payments in my account. Natwest refunded all money in a week, but suffered too much in that week (never been to a police station in my life before that)

Same thing happened 1 month before again (shame!!)

denys wrote:

Kanjoose_one,

I had a similar situation back in 2000 with NatWest (part of RBS).
Purely bank’s mistake - my debit card for a new account was sent to a wrong address and someone spent around £750 of that accounts’ overdraft. (They used to send already activated cards back then.) I had to go to the police to get a crime reference and fill all those “fraudulent transaction” forms. I continued to use the account and incur interest and overlimit charges as was assured that all of these will be refunded. It took them around three months and a formal complain to refund the money, but they did it along with a very generous goodwill payment.

So write a formal complain if you did not do it already and take it easy. There is no need to go to extremes and borrow money off third parties to stay within your overdraft limit. Consider your balance as being current + value of fraudulent transactions - all relevant charges.

kanjoose_one

Sent that letter of complaint off. Spoke to the Royal Banks' fraud dept today and they said the police have not came back to them with anything concrete so they cant finalise things and make a decision yet. They couldnt give me a timeframe so its coming up to FOUR MONTHS and counting since the matter was first reported