Our bank account has been cleared out

[lougle]

Today my DH said 'why do we have no money??'
I told him not to be so ridiculous, because we have been working really hard to save money and build up a buffer in our account. So I looked at our bank account: available balance £14.

Someone has used almost £2000 on Next and Foot Asylum purchases, with a pizza and a dessert order thrown in .

The irony is that I never buy from Next because we can't afford for me to buy new clothes. I only ever buy from charity shops or (very rarely) Primark. So the fraud claim is very easy to prove. That and the fact that the man on the phone from the bank had to tell me what Foot Asylum is .

The transactions were all in the last day or so, and were all made using DH's card. We also had a letter today from Next, addressed to a man we've never heard of, thanking him for advising them if his change of address. So Next have given us a fraud case ID number and have put a block on account applications from our address. The bank fraud team will contact us tomorrow.

How gutting. We're lucky that DD1's DLA gets paid into a different account, so we can use that for a few days and reimburse it when we get reimbursed by the bank. If it got paid into the same account we'd be absolutely done for.

[Kr1stina]

You don't need the PIN to buy things online , just the details on the card and the address etc

[ellenanora5]

Oh it's fucking horrible, happened to me earlier on in the year, had money in my account to finally pay off my credit card (I was on a payment plan over five years) and I was so proud that I was finishing a year early, logged on to bank and nothing, I couldn't believe it, I rang and was put on to fraud squad, the money was taken about an hour earlier.

I have a very tight budget, can only work partime because ds2 is disabled so to actually finish with this debt was huge for me. The bank were great and I was refunded in 48 hours and finally cleared the bloody credit card.

lougle, so sorry this has happened and I hope you get refunded very soon.

[nancy75]

I think most card crime has gone from using cloned cards in shops (with a signature) to online shopping fraud. you don't need pin number for online shopping and you don't need the card to collect stuff

[lougle]

I am (in hindsight) bemused as to why our account wasn't flagged by our bank. I remember in the 90's, I bought some groceries in my home town, then drove 80 miles to a specialist veterinary hospital to collect my parents' GSD who had been admitted for ultrasound and splenectomy. I had this 39kg hulk of a dog on the end of a lead, delighted to see us, when my card was declined. I was on the phone to Lloyds, still clinging on to said excitable dog, when they said "well we thought it was a bit odd that you'd buy some groceries,then be at a vet's some 80 miles away...". I said "Thank you for your concern, but as you can hear, I am at the vet's, and my very large dog is pulling very hard on his lead..." They unblocked my card

[Iliveinalighthousewiththeghost]

I hope karma gets the bastards good and proper, preferably. When they're on their uppers.

[SistersOfPercy]

They will often address the parcel to someone else and when it's delivered to you you'll get a knock on the door from a 'neighbour' who thinks his parcel has been delivered to you by accident. Of course at the time it sounds plausible, especially if you've not yet realised you've been cloned.

Mine was done at the local Tesco cashpoint. I always cover my hand with my purse now so even if they cloned the card they couldn't see my pin.

[iknowimcoming]

I have had this a couple of times and dh gets it regularly sadly. The police are rarely involved and the cases are rarely investigated as the banks and card companies simply claim on their insurance which is why people persist with it. It's infuriating, one time it happened to me, I knew exactly who had done it but the card company weren't interested at all

[stonecircle]

Same thing happened to us. First Direct rang to say there was some unusual activity on our account. Approximately £1k worth of payments were going through to things like sounded like utility names but weren't - eg London Electricity. First direct could see fraudulent payments pending but couldn't stop them. However they reimbursed the full amount by the end of the day and were incredibly helpful.

They said either a cloned card at a garage or an Internet purchase on a not very secure site were the most likely causes.

[Foofoobum]

Wasn't quite a clear out but someone used my card to pay for Netflix. I was with Coop bank at the time and they treated me like I was committing fraud (for £7.99 a month!) they argued with me and listened in to a conference call with Netflix who confirmed that I hadn't set it up. Netflix refused to say who had (even to the bank) for data protection reasons (wtf?) - I hear of people having such an easy time when amounts are larger but who only steals £7.99 a month for a few months? (My bad for not noticing right away)

[Northernlurker]

I know somebody who had their card blocked because it was used to buy two tickets for separate flights back to the UK, one leaving a few hours after the other but on the same day and for the same name. Unfortunately it wasn't a fraud. Our friend got to the airport for the first flight, fell asleep in departures and missed their flight meaning they had to buy a second ticket........

[lougle]

Oh I bet that hurt, Northernlurker.

[polyhymnia]

This has happened to me OP and my bank sorted it out very quickly.

[NanaNina]

I don't think any of us should under estimate the growing crime related to internet banking/shopping whatever. I think the fraudsters are getting more and more competent in carrying out fraudulent activity. I use the internet a lot, and bank online/shop online etc but I'm beginning to wonder if it's safe enough. Cards can be cloned - they don't even have to be carried away and returned to you which is still the procedure in some restaurants. Tiny cameras can be fitted to ATM machines that will photograph your card and a duplicate made.

Almost every week I get in my e mail posts from Barclays Bank, HMRC, Apple ID etc., and they all begin with "Dear Valued Customer" the Barclays one tells me there has been suspicious activity on my Barclaycard (I don't have one) and delete the e mail but these messages are of course computer generated and if only 1 out of 50 people fall for the scam it will be worth their while, but I suspect it will be something like 20% - the HMRC one says "you are due a tax rebate of £580 - please give your bank details so that we can credit your account - yeah right!! Again I think the numbers falling for this scam will be high. I telephoned HMRC (think they might have changed their name) but they were interested, just told me to delete the e mail. The Apple ID card (that I don't have) was another warning there was fraudulent activity on my account.

The internet is a mixed blessing indeed!

[Custardo]

grrrr sorry this happened to you.

I have used uber only once - but somehow some fuckers in Canada were having a merry old time on my account one night - I was up until 1am cancelling my card, caling the bank £ ive never even been to Canada", cancelling uber grrr

fuckers

[Bogeyface]

Oh the scammy emails, I get loads per day.

My personal favourite was from "paypal" who claimed that there was suspicious activity on my accunt. Laughed my head off at that one but I deleted it before I thought of screen shotting it to post on here!

[Bogeyface]

The Barclays advert is good, its a shame more banks dont do them.

[sandgrown]

Foot Asylum is a trainer and clothes shop for young men mainly (my 15 year old loves it) so I suspect your fraudster is pretty young .I never found out where my card was cloned but it was stopped when they tried to book a hotel 100 miles away.

[blueemerald]

My friend's card got cloned this week and someone ordered £420 worth of 'takeaway' from Deliveroo! Deliveroo don't even deliver to her address!

[GinandJag]

It's inconvenient, but you shouldn't be out of pocket.

[RuggerHug]

3littlefrogs your poor DS lougle so sorry this happened, it's a pain in the arse I know but if it's any help I work for a bank (shhhh) and one of my best mates there is in fraud. If it's obviously genuine (as yours is) it'll be sorted quick.

[PeaceLoveAndDiscoBiscuits]

What's all this about petrol stations? Why are they dodgy?

[cricketballs]

We had it the other year; Natwest called me before I'd noticed. They purchased from Microsoft and other online things including just eat! Had to sign a declaration form stating we weren't the purchasers and got money back within 3 days.

We generally leave Xmas shopping till the last minute and Next is the last place we visit (because of where it's located) and every bloody year I end up on the phone to Natwest with a huge queue behind me because their payment system raises a call to get me verify and I can never remember my security answers!

[cricketballs]

We also though had an instance of our local shops system putting back through early hours on a Sunday night 10x a previous payment which took us £500 overdrawn. (Happened to other customers as well). Again, Natwest were very good and credited us back within 3 days and paid the direct debits that would have defaulted

[ijustwannadance]

There are a group of petrol stations in our area that were renowned for card cloning. Some where caught a few years back.
All owned/ran by the same large family.

It stopped but only because of the newer card readers that you no longer have to hand your card to cashier who used that split second to wave it over the scanner.

Contactless can be easily used for a few small transactions before being flagged.