I can’t understand how they did it! (Card fraud)

[LellowYedbetter]

I logged into my credit card randomly the other day to find a £2k transaction on it that I didn’t make. The card was not lost or stolen and was with me the whole time.
Obviously I reported it and it’s being dealt with but I can’t understand how they did it! AIBU to worry that the card company might decide I did make the transaction and make me pay for it??

This has happened to us recently too. As well as the other scenarios it could also be a dodgy member of staff in a call centre, either in the UK or overseas.

Someone once used my card details to call a fancy spa and book and prepay for a day of treatments under my name and then turned up and enjoyed them! I asked the spa to check their CCTV to see who it was but they never got back to me. However my bank refunded the money really easily with limited hassle!

I think you will be fine - annoying and stressful though, sorry this happened to you!

I have just bought a new purse/wallet, inside it says it is RFTD protected.
Not much use if I only shop online though.

The banks don't really care about this - they regard it as a cost of business and they don't do much to prevent to investigate.

Be wary of people ringing you up and pretending to be from your bank. I had a call querying a purchase on Amazon. The man said he was calling from the fraud department of MasterCard and Visa. This immediately rang alarm bells for me. They're separate companies and I've previously had someone pretending to be from the police about fraud on my card. He was very convincing and it went as far as him asking for my PIN before I was sure it was a scam and put the phone down.

So, on this occasion, I cheerfully said, 'Thank you so much, I'll ring my bank' and rang off. Don't know what else he was going to ask. But I checked with my bank and of course there was no mystery amount deducted from my account. I guess he said it was an Amazon purchase because it's a fair bet nearly everyone has made one.

Someone once called my bank pretending to be me and requested a replacement card, asked for a 2nd named user to be added and changed my address all in one phone call! The bank just did it all and the lowlife concerned managed to withdraw over 2k in cash using the new card.
I did get it back but was furious at the banks negligence.

DH had his debit card cloned in a Tesco Local. Was all sorted out quite quickly and initially it was a couple of small purchases, presumably to test the water which we picked up on quickly because we were on a really tight budget and I watched the account like a hawk. Tesco couldn't have cared less.

Well, in our days there is a lot of hacker problems. Maybe you needed more protection?

Somewhere out there there are records of every card and their details ,it doesnt necessarily have to be a key logger or the card be cloned
One time my bank put a fraud hold on my card as someone tried to withdraw money from an atm in the US with it,I asked how they flagged it as i have never had problems with atms abroad...they said because i had used it in Waitrose 10 mins before lol
Its not above the realms of possibility that there are internal errors

This happened to me years ago, much before contactless so it might not be that. Someone used my card to buy a bathroom in Liverpool, I am in Scotland. The credit card company asked me to call the shop and also to speak to my husband to see if he might have bought it. I politely told them if my husband had bought a whole bathroom I would have bloody noticed. Also I hadn’t been to Liverpool and I couldn’t phone the shop to discuss the purchase as I didn’t bloody purchase anything. I ended up having to speak to a senior staff member on the fraud team and they sorted it very quickly. But I think likely was an online payment or something similar.

Just check everything on your statement . I was charged for 4 pizzas in the Bahamas before a replacement card had arrived in the post ( I have never ever been to the Bahamas ) All refunded and fine. But advice to look for little debits is good. I think sometimes it is what happens before a great swinging one ( to see if you have noticed )

& yes always swipe - present card yourself - don't give it to anyone & report asap.

The one my Dh does not like is PayPal - fraudulent transaction on that account so now closed down

@Lellowyedbetter - I suspect you will be fine - but yes I can understand it is worrying. Best wishes to you

Another thing to be careful of is online offers that look too good to be true-/. Try this for£2 etc, when postage would be £5. They are often just after your card details and with credit cards they know people often don’t look one month to the next. I only picked up on the fraudster taking £80 a day off my credit card because I was close to my limit after a holiday and after3 days I got a bank alert to say I was over my limit

I had this on my Barclays visa which was my emergency card. Never used it and it was kept in a drawer.

Had a phonecall from Barclays querying a transaction for motorbike parts to the tune of £800 - shame the credit limit on the card was £500 so they lucked out!!

To this day I have no idea where they got the card details from as it had never been used!

Fake comments re amazing new payment systems on zombie threads on forums are also something of a red flag...

Ah good, deleted.

This happened to me, many many years ago. Then a newspaper article mentioned that an online company (Cotton Traders) had had a major data breach, but had decided not to tell their customers. As I had only used the card there and a couple of other places online, that seemed the most likely cause.

As for booking sites, I was once double charged (charged twice) for a booking dot com reservation in Croatia. When I complained and requested one of the charges be refunded, booking said nothing to do with us the payment was taken by another third party, an accommodation booking agency in Croatia, who took payments on behalf of the owner. So you never know who your debit or credit card details are passed onto or if this is done securely or if someone has physically written down the number or emailed it to someone, etc...

I've got a phone based bank account and it's been brilliant. I get a phone notification every time I use the card.

It's happened to most people I know at some point. You report it to the bank asap,they take some details,you sign papers to say it wasn't you and you will help with any investigation if necessary and they refund your money.

Try not to worry.

When I lived in Manchester, someone used my card to buy driving lessons in Bristol - the bank flagged it and I was refunded no problem but I didn’t hear if they caught the fraudsters!

@MrSandman89

Did you seriously just raise a zombie thread to tell someone maybe they needed more protection 🤦🏻‍♀️