Has anyone on here experienced bankcard fraud? My son got his latest statement yesterday and there is a transaction by switch,which is for £200 which he did not do! He phoned the bank and they have told him it was a 'customer not present' transaction and gave him a dispute number, so now he has to sit and wait to see if he will get his money back.

We looked the company up on the web and they are a designer shirt and tie shop in London and USA, but we don't know where this transaction took place as his statement did not give a location.

Presumably if the 'fraudster' used his card over the phone or internet, then they also gave a delivery address for the item/s ordered,so we hope the bank will check into that.

In the meantime he is £200 worse off and as a very much indebt student, now living back with parents, he can ill afford it.
Do you think the bank will reinburse him?

Jacqueline.

It depends, I think, on whether he can prove it wasn't him who bought the goods.  A colleague of mine had her credit card and pin number taken by her flatmate who then took out £1000 on it.  Because the transactions took place from a machine in a local grocery store, there were no cameras and therefore no proof that it wasn't my colleague who withdrew the money.  The bank didn't want to know.

I have previously had a new card stolen from the post and £900 was spent on it - the bank worked out what was happening and stopped the card eventually. They didn't expect me to pay the money but I think that was because it wasn't yet in my possession when it was stolen. I took out insurance to cover theft, etc for all my cards after this, but your post has made me think that I ought to check whether this covers fraudulent use over the internet / cloning, etc.  When I took the policy out, these things were not really heard of. 

I expect they will be able to trace the delivery address from the company in question - I think whether your son gets reimbursed might depend on whether the bank accept this as proof that he did not make the transaction. 

It annoys me that the people I know who have had this happen to them always seem to be those who can least afford it.  It will take my colleague years to pay back the £1000 that was stolen from her.

HI Jacqueline

What bank is he with?  We are with Natwest and they reimbursed us straight away when it happened to us.  Have the police been out to see him yet, as they will give hime a crime ref number that you then need to give to the bank.  They think our card had been cloned.  It really is awful when it happens to you.  It was over Christmas and our account had to be frozen and we had to wait for a new card.

Hi - In Feb of this year my husband and I were victims of the same crime.

My husband strictly manages our money weekly and noticed several transactions made within hours of each other totaling over £1,500. A quick call to the bank and they confirmed that the transactions were on our account.

They immediately cancelled the cards (not that there was any money left in that account anymore) and put us through to the fraud helpline.

It took about two weeks in total to get the money back into our account. In the meantime they wouldnt/couldnt help us replace the lost monies, they suggested a loan but that can take a week and its a lot of fussing about - we were lucky to have money in other accounts but if that was our only account I don't know how we would have lived!

Once you dispute the transactions, they send you a list of the recent account activity and you mark which ones you believe you did not make, sign it and return it. They then look into it and come back with a decision.

For us it was very simple, the transactions were made hundreds of miles away from where we live when we were both at work. They bought several items from clothing and electrical stores and paid at the till using a cloned card they also bought things from amazon and paid their littlwoods catalogue bill online :D. The thing I thought funny was two transactions two mins apart both for £199 in an Orange mobile phone shop. So someone has some nice new phones at my or rather my banks expense!

Two weeks later and the money was returned to our account - you don't get to know anything from there, they sort out any prosecutions.

hope that helps.

Rox

[Edit: shoiuld just say we are with Barclays]

Just a thought - its been a few years since I had anything to do with banking - most mail order/internet companies will only deliver to an address which is not the registered card billing address after one transaction/delivery has been made to the billing address. 

Things may have changed a bit but I am sure that the billing address is still requested before any transaction is made by internet/mail order.  A customer not present transaction usualy means it was done by telephone or internet.  At point of sale the card processor is expected to ask if the delivery address is different from the billing address.  As there is a delivery involved in this crime you are probably going to be okay as far as recompense is concerned. 

It is worth checking with the Banking Onbudsman or your local citizens advice to see if this is still the case.

He banks with several banks,not much in any account tho', but this was on his H.S.B.C account. He was at work at the time and his card was in his wallet. He has used his card for switch twice this past month,once for the dentist check up and again for some bike part via the internet,but he would never buy designer clothes even if he could have afforded them.

The bank never told him to report it as a crime to the police,maybe he should,I'll suggest it tonight when he gets home.They also did not suggest he cancel his card?! He uses this account for his incoming wage and outgoing bills,the only bill he has is his phone contract and his housekeeping to us which he pays cash for,so on the whole he rarely spends cash unless he really has to,apart from fuel to and from work. He never goes out these days unless it's free,such as canoeing with mates or for a bike ride or walk somewhere,as he is trying to get savings together to pay off his student loans and to try to get onto the housing market.

It's true these things usually happen to those who can least afford it.

Jacqueline.

A bit different this, but my son had 2 fraudulent direct debits set up on his account (one was for a mobile phone and contract).  He noticed the same day and we reported it to the B.S (Halifax) They cancelled the DD and said for any chance of getting his money back we had to report it to the police as well, we then had to take the police form in to the branch for the manager to fill in. He did eventually get the money back.  I also insisted that they cancel his card and open a new account for him... it didn't seem to occur to them that it may get used again! :-(

He's only ever used his card over the internet so someone must have got his details that way, either electronically or from where he's ordered stuff. What annoyes me is they have secure ordering etc. then some companies go and send a bill with all your info on it through the post!

>and again for some bike part via the internet

Hmm, funny that, my son bought a bike frame just before his money got nicked!

Kath

The law states that for mail order - you must obtain the full address at which the card is registered, this may or may not be randomly checked by the card issuer when you process the payment.

You are not required to send the item to that address, the store just have to show that they have made every effort to obtain the correct and legal information belonging to the card being debited.

If fraud does occur the business may be contacted and have to provide the police or investigation team with all information regarding that order including all addresses.

In my experience in customer service ive done thousands of card debits and I could count on two hands the amount of times the card issuer has requested the registered address, name etc...

I think stores who do not protect their customers with encrypted checkouts fuel internet fraud. Any reputable store should offer secure online ordering and this can be checked by viewing the certificate available by clicking on the padlock on the bottom right of the screen as you check out.

Of course, anytime you give your personal information to a company you risk becoming a victim but you can try and reduce it by making sure you only shop with reputable, secure shops online and by never letting your card out of your sight in the highstreet.

I agree with you, I would think in this case he won't have a problem, if the £200 spend is not normal for her son or it was done miles away etc they won't even question it :)

Hi Jacqueline
It happened to me twice last year - both bankers cards and both happened while in my possession.  The first one was for about £250 which i noticed a few days later when I went online to check my account.  He needs to contact his bank immediately and let them know which are the fraudulent transactions - they will send him a form to fill out and he should be reimbursed within about a month.  I noticed this had happened before the money had been taken out of my account, but they said they could not stop it.  On the other occassion, with my business account, again, I noticed within a day of it happening - it was about £2500 and a single payment to somewhere in the States - they stopped it immediately.  Oh yes, on both occassions the cards had to be cancelled.  I'm sure the bank will reimburse him - card theft is happening in epidemic proportions at the moment - but it may take a month or so.

Sorry when I said card theft, I meant anything bought on a card.  It is a huge business, and it seems not to matter that the actual card is still in the owners possession.  There was a tv documentary about it not so long ago - there were even cases of it being done with inside help.

I had this happen to me when I was at univerisyt na dit was the worst experience of my life. It turns out someone was taking small amounts from my account initially, like £10 or £20, which I wasn't initially picking up on as I was not regularly receiving my post, but then whoever was doing this decided to take £570 from my account. We traced the money to a South African based CD store! I went to the bank and was told to report the issue to the police. I was in the bank for hours sorting everything out - getting everything cancelled, going through 6 months worth of past statements to get a total for everything that had been taken (in total nearly £700). I then had to go to the police. I reported the situation, and they were actually very good, and they concluded that the fraud was committed by an internet card fraudtser, who uses number calculations to steal your bank details (the other option was that someone had got hold of my details from my room, but this was unlikely). It took months to be rectified though, as the bank had to investigate seperately from the police, and would not refund me the money until they had traced all the transactions to make certain they weren't mine (they knew they weren't but it was their policy, which makes sense). In the meantime, I had no access to cash, and was flat broke for about two months until my account details were changed and I was refunded the money. It was a nightmare. I am so frightened by card fraud now that I have a cross shredder (only use cross shredders and fraudsters and now taking straight shredded documents and taping them back together, whereas this can't be done with cross-shredders). Also, I have keep stringent records of everythis I spend in a cash book, as well as ordering twice monthly statements. It was too much money to loose to some ass*ole who wanted a free ride off money that was hard for me to come by in the first place.
One piece of advice I will give is that if he also reports it to the police, the bank look on this very favourably, and my case was sorted out much quicker because the police were involved, and also it helps the police to keep tabs on fraud in their area. I really hope this gets sorted out for you, but he MUST report his to his bank and the police, or else he is open to more fraud and they might take a larger sum in the future.

hi all, it happened to me last month the day b4 we had phoned up to buy a new crate 4 t dog cant say where for legal reasons but the day after £496 went from my visa absolutly s***t myself  R lass didnt believe me at first and this was a cloths shop in sw19

hi all, it happened to me last month the day b4 we had phoned up to buy a new crate 4 t dog cant say where for legal reasons but the day after £496 went from my visa absolutly s***t myself  R lass didnt believe me at first and this was a cloths shop in london and a card holder not present some places never do the correct checks. I used to work in retail and you would not believe how easy it is, they are ways round ALL the red tape. I know of a few occasions where members of staff have leaked card details to associates or they know somone at the shop where the fraud transaction has occurred.
There for in some cases it can be converted to cash eg £50 off the card and £50 out of the till and given to the frauder.

"Card holder not present" just means they havent swiped it ie.. simulates mail order transaction only leaving address blank, that way card company/ police etc will not have a prayer because shop assistant can just deny everything

All sounds familiar! My card was cloned about a year ago. They had about £1000 from my account, just when we were saving the deposit on our house, so I didn't notice it had gone straight away. When I got my statement I noticed lots of transactions down in London, Pizza, Clothes, electrical stores and even more pizza! Luckily one shop transaction was made about half an hour after I'd used my card in sainsburys in Northampton... it was obvious some one was helping themselves. I had to report it to the police and the money was reimbursed about 2 weeks later. I'd always thought "It would never happen to me" but it can.

Hi guys,

Just to say that I know it's not quite relevant to the topic, but i have been 'hit' on my barclaycard just recently by an internet company based in Romania!  I am covered but it was only by chance that i spotted it.  500 euros - i dont travel anywhere like that so i was lucky, but keep your eyes peeled and check those statements - apparently b/card know that this is big stuff and that many people have been hit regardless of whether they even use the internet, so just be cautious!
Sara