Credit Card Theft

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PBancroft

Senior Member
Location
Winchester
I have a very low opinion of thieves in general, having been the victim of one recently. And it seems to have happened again.

I've just found out that in time for Christmas someone has managed to purloin my debit card details and seem to be using it to purchase their Chrimbo presents... about £300 worth! :ohmy:

Now this is relatively easily rectifiable - the payment has gone through a Paypal account so they will hopefully look into it, and when the phonelines open with Santander a little later this morning I'll report the transaction and get a stop put on the card.

But really! To steal at Christmas. The sad thing is whoever has done this has ultimately just ruined their own one too - because they will get caught.

Anyway, moral of the story - be careful, and check your statements!
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
Anyone who steals will have no morals what so ever. Christmas or not.
In fact I can imagine Christmas would be a good time for CC fraud as a lot of people would have gone mad with their credit cards.
 
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PBancroft

PBancroft

Senior Member
Location
Winchester
1648015 said:
I know someone who suffered a visit from the ultimate secret Santa. All their presents stolen from under the tree, in the wrapping. How shoot it that as human behaviour?

Wow. That's bad.

I remember that my parent's neighbours used to have chickens, but they gave it up after three years in a row just before Christmas someone broke the runs and stole them all (presumably to sell).
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
1648015 said:
I know someone who suffered a visit from the ultimate secret Santa. All their presents stolen from under the tree, in the wrapping. How shoot it that as human behaviour?

Moral of the story: Never leave real presents on show under the tree. If you must have them as decoration, wrap empty boxes, cunningly weighted with tupperwares full of defrosted prawns and other scented delights, and hope the scum are well away from your house when they open the tupperwares...
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
The thing with credit card fraud is the police aren't interested... so it's highly likely 'they' won't get caught You'll get you money back (probably) but that'll be the end of it

And i hope you have a better post-fraud experience with Santander than my brother had!
 

TVC

Guest
How do you think they got the details?

I never use my debit card on line or give the number out over the phone, I only ever use my credit card (then pay it off immediately), that way it's not my money that's being stolen it's Barclaycards.

I've only had the card details stolen once, that was after I booked a hotel in Paris through Hotels.com. A few days after the transaction one of our French Cousins tried to use it to buy a big TV on line, Barclaycard rejected the payment and stopped the card before I knew anything about it. The best bit was when I got to the hotel in Paris they had an e-mail from Hotels.com with all my card details on it, fantastic, that would explain it. I told Barclaycard when I got back but I don't know if they followed it up
 

Manonabike

Über Member
Christmas is the perfect time for thieves to spent with their stolen cards...... a few years ago my wife had her handbag stolen with her cards and cheque book. We reported the incident to the banks and we were assured everything was under control. Months later, late January we received a large enveloped from NatWest Bank that contained a large number of letters telling us that the account was overdrawn and we should not write cheques against the account. This was my wife personal bank account and she had nearly £400 before the thieves started writing cheques...... Natwest bank to begin with was like talking to a brick wall, their best advise was to deposit £600 to cover the stolen funds :-)..... luckily, about the fifth call to them found somebody with intelligence that said she would put the thing right. She took all the details and she actually did put the thing right ( we had done the reporting by the book). Days later we started receiving calls and letters from a debt collector agency on behalf of Woolworth for some transactions with the Natwest debit card..... the thieves had managed to make purchasing during the Christmas period at several Woolworth stores in two different counties. We figured that Woolworth was perhaps the only large store still taking the old fashion system where you didn't need to type a pin number. The bank didn't honour the payments as the card had been reported stolen so Woolworth was trying to get their money from us. The bank should had informed Woolworth that the card had been reported stolen and that would have avoided so much anguish. Fortunatelly, the same lady from Natwest fixed that problem too.

We went through a terrible time, my wife was in tears..... the bank to start with made her feel even worst. They could see that the card and cheque book had been reported stolen but they insisted she should deposit £600 :angry:. The debt collecting agency was an experience that we will never forget.... they were threatening us with all kinds of things.

We got a letter from a credit card company, I think it was MBNA to say that somebody had used the card and since the card had been reported stolen 7 months previously, we had nothing to worry about. On the other hand, Natwest bank were terribly incompetent and we had to go through hell for weeks.
 
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PBancroft

PBancroft

Senior Member
Location
Winchester
How do you think they got the details?

I don't think they did. I think my PayPal account (which I haven't used in a long time and didn't think had any current account details on it) was compromised. I've since changed the password to that account, making sure there are no other linked email addresses, and had my card cancelled.
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
I never leave my card details on the Paypal site. When I need to make a Paypal payment I put a card up, do the payment then remove the card.
 

DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
I've had this happen twice:

First time my new MBNA card was used before we'd even got it. They got a bit difficult until I said that we'd not received the card until 3 days after the transaction. That was sorted OK.

A couple of years ago our Halifax debit card was used. Again, it was sorted - but much easier than with MBNA.

Your experience with Natwest seems awful. There's no way they should be asking you to deposit cash to cover thieving.
 
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PBancroft

PBancroft

Senior Member
Location
Winchester
I never leave my card details on the Paypal site. When I need to make a Paypal payment I put a card up, do the payment then remove the card.

That's exactly what I normally do (or did when I used PayPal). I guess I must have forgotten the last time I used it.

Oddly enough I do now know the shipping address for the goods in question. Am tempted to pay a visit. :evil:
 

Brains

Legendary Member
Location
Greenwich
Twice I have had mobile phone calls from Barclays to ensure a transaction was genuine.
1st time was in Hong Kong, and yes it was really me trying to get cash out of an ATM at 4am London time on a Sunday

2nd time I was in Cornwall, I had just bought £400 worth of items in three different purchases at a departent store in Essex.
They cancelled my card on the spot.
They were using the real card which had been sent in the post but never arrived.

We also had an odd one, over the period of a couple of months we got a number of small and expensive items sent to us from the catalogue companies, Ipod's, Micro stereo's, watches, jewellery and so on, we never figured out how the scam worked, as we sent the gear back, we were not changed, the companies got the gear back.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
We also had an odd one, over the period of a couple of months we got a number of small and expensive items sent to us from the catalogue companies, Ipod's, Micro stereo's, watches, jewellery and so on, we never figured out how the scam worked, as we sent the gear back, we were not changed, the companies got the gear back.
I had an Olympus digital camera sent to my address. Apparently, someone in central or Eastern Europe (I've forgotten what country) was using my card details to try and get tech kit sent out to him from the UK. Most of the transactions had been flagged up and cancelled. For some reason the camera sale went through, but the company decided to send it my home address rather than the foreign address provided to them. I liked the camera, so I ended up keeping it (and not reversing that payment)!
 
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