Surely they can’t just get away with this?

[Melly1801]

Someone found my purse and before I could call to freeze the card, they’ve spent approx £700 on it. There was also cash in there, and the purse was designer. The bank is sorting the spending, and I know I won’t get the cash or purse back.

I have the address of the person who’s been buying stuff, as they’ve stupidly put it down for delivery of items. I have got this from three retailers, so it’s unlikely to be an address they’re using just for this purpose as why would it be the same one? And even if it is, there must be some sort of connection.

Anyway, the police know all of this but it doesn’t sound like they’ll do much as they’ve said they won’t even speak to the bank. The bank’s fraud team doesn’t sound like they’ll do much, other than make sure I don’t have to pay. But that’s not the point - it seems like this piece of 💩 is going to get away with this. They couldn’t even tell me that the items wouldn’t get delivered either, so not only will they get away with it, they’ll be getting free stuff too.

So am I being unreasonable to think they’ll get away with this? I wondered if anyone else had any similar experiences and what the outcome was?

@Clymene is right, too busy pursuing people who tweet things that cause hurty feelings. Where I live there are posters all over encouraging people to report incidents to the police eg if someone says something you find insulting. I wish i was exaggerating! Have a look at We Are A Fair Cop.

If you have the energy, I suggest contacting your local PCC as they should be influencing how the force use their limited resources.

Post a turd?

Before you accept anything the bank has to say in this, go and look at the info on the financial ombudsman website regarding unauthorised transactions. When this happened to me, I found out there was a vast gulf between the grounds on which grounds the bank said they did/didn't have to refund money for and the actual law!

Basically, the bank have a duty to ensure that transactions are authorised by you. In situations where you dispute a transaction, they MUST conduct a THOROUGH investigation to determine whether the transactions were authorised by yourself or not. Unless they have evidence that the transactions were authorised by you, they have to refund your money. The only exception is where you have been grossly negligent (there is a very high bar for proving this).

The bank may try to fob you off (as Barclays did with me) by, for instance, claiming that the haven't found Evidence of fraud (despite not following up on info like CCTV evidence, delivery addresses etc) but they can't get away with it if u appeal.

Good luck

You can bet if you went round to seek some vigilante justice, you’d be arrested.

I despair with this sort of thing. If the authorities pursued some of these people, it would send a strong message out.

We had a holiday in Florida and were advised not to let our credit cards out of our sight when using them to pay to avoid them being cloned. The whole fortnight we were both very diligent until on the way back to the airport. We stopped for a meal and I stupidly let the waiter take my card to run it through the till.

3 months later, I was contacted by our credit card company asking me if I had bought a £5000 lap top in a well know computer store in Miami. Clearly, the transaction was nothing to do with me and the company refunded the money immediately. I told them I knew exactly who and where the card had been copied and I still had the receipt with the waiter’s name on it. The credit card company weren’t even bothered.

What doubly peed me off was I actually gave this —scumbag— man a generous tip as I wanted to get rid of some of my holiday cash!!

Check your home insurance policy - you may be covered for the lost cash and purse and driving licence. I was mugged at knifepoint but managed to stop all the cards before the theif could use them. My household insurance had an amount of cover for "all losses" which refunded the cash and other personal items.

I'd be more worried about possible attempts to get credit using your details. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Was just going to put that. They now have a first form of photo ID so I would alert experian/equifax, lock down your credit file with an extra password and monitor it closely :(

@SmellyOldOwls

Get her mail redirected to your house for 30 days

Great idea, then she’ll have loads more information to help her defraud @Melly1801 even more.

They will know your address from the driving licence so be careful before doling out any retribution.

@ItsCoachBombay

Someone stole my phone from my handbag once, but I had find my phone on it linked to my smart watch, I tracked it to an address local to me. Gave all this information to the police who said "nothing they could do"

I was so angry.

I went round banged on the door, a woman came to the door off her face, I said look no questions asked give me my phone back, she said she didn't have it so I rang it off my smart watch and could hear it ringing, she still denied it.

I lost my cool, told her I was gonna "knock her the fuck out" she called the police, they then arrived on blue lights, I changed tactics and became all soft and polite and tearful saying she had my phone, rang it again, police told her to hand the phone over. Got my phone back, because I caused a "disturbance" and then denied it all, and went all "soft woman, and Oscar tears"

😏

Maybe try something similar 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is shocking!

When the same thing happened to me the police officer went round to the house and retrieved my phone, I even watched the little find my iPhone dot travelling back to my house via the app on my iPad

Yanbu to be angry that it's not being investigated but the police can't/don't investigate some types of crime now. They'll give you a crime number for insurance purposes but that's about it.

It shouldn't be a choice between chasing up stolen goods and chasing up hate crimes. Both should be priorities.

I contacted the Police about horrific online "chat" aimed at women, condoning rape and encouraging really vile abuse of young girls. ("I would kick her fucking cunt bone in" was one comment aimed at a school girl.) I was told the perpetrators would be dealt with, yet 8 months later they are still posting similar things.

Also contacted them about a gang of teenagers roughing up a middle aged man with downs syndrome in our local town centre. I was told no complaint had been received and they couldn't trace the gang (despite there being CCTV everywhere).

We need to seriously invest in our policing.

I hope you get your belongings back OP.

Firstly do you have an incident number from the police? They should have registered the stolen cards on their system. Get that incident number and guard it for your life!
Then can you contact the shops where she bought the goods and cancel the orders?
Explain the situation to the retailers and say that you don't want them to be involved in the execution of a crime and you want them to cancel the orders to X address immediately as they were purchased using a stolen card, yours.
If they refuse, tell them to change the delivery address on the orders to your address.
You should be either able to cancel the order or get the order redirected to you so that you can return the order and get your money back.

I think had I been in a rational cognitive psychological state I would have discussed this option with the call handler, but when they said "nothing we can do" I hung up before my details could be even taken, jumped in my car believing I was Rambo and made my way to the house. 😳

When I got him with my phone I did think "not your finest moment Coach, offering out a woman on her doorstep whilst forcing her front door open/preventing it from closing" 🤣

Welcome to some of the rough areas of South Wales though. Sometimes it's easier to just sort it out yourself than ask the police. Not as bad as my cousin though who put her boyfriends downstairs windows through when she found out he slept with her 21 year old daughter whilst they were in a relationship. 😬 No police were involved in that matter, it was settled after that.

@sheiselectric

Send her a glitter bomb

www.glitterretribution.co.uk/

Or some dog poop.

Call some double glazing companies or Jehovah witnesses and say you're interested and give her address.

Brilliant

I’m afraid I’d be going round.

I had the same - somehow someone managed to use my card - I still do not know how - but amazon alerted me to what they thought was suspicious activity and this person had spent several hundred pounds on perfumes and other items that could be moved on on ebay. And one item was interesting - they paid their council tax, so their address and council ref number were there for all to see. I told the bank about this and they just shrugged their shoulders and said it is not worth following up - they accept a degree of fraudulent loss. They refunded me all the money so I have no grumble in that regard. But in the end it is our money that pays for their disregard of fraud in this way.

I went round banged on the door, a woman came to the door off her face, I said look no questions asked give me my phone back, she said she didn't have it so I rang it off my smart watch and could hear it ringing, she still denied it.

I lost my cool, told her I was gonna "knock her the fuck out" she called the police, they then arrived on blue lights, I changed tactics and became all soft and polite and tearful saying she had my phone, rang it again, police told her to hand the phone over. Got my phone back, because I caused a "disturbance" and then denied it all, and went all "soft woman, and Oscar tears"

You're hardcore 👏 - I hope this is what I would do too!

People can steal off you and scam you and the police do naff all but god forbid you tweet questioning the removal of sex based spaces/biological sex and they'll be round to wrap your knuckles in a hot minute.

Glitter. Definitely send glitter.

*rap

This is one of those crimes where you are meant to be satisfied with getting the money back from card spend. Your purse and cash are miniscule in the great scheme of things. The police do not investigate these cases unless the perpetrator walks into the station and confesses.

There are many cases that the police will not get involved in if the cost of investigating is too high - Very early on a senior officer determines likelihood of solving a case v investigation costs. There are several crimes, right up to death of victim where police first consider cost of investigating!

That's where we are in our society - How depleted and lacklustre our police forces (included CID) has become - presumably due to decades of reduced funding and training.

An old friend of ours had this same issue, and amazon wouldnt do no "shit" but Marks + Spencers did take it up on the fraudulant spend and found this person to contact them and they said that they were an acutal relative who lived up in runcorn, and as no relative in that area somehow marks + spencers refunded her, but surely you would have been given a crime number allocated from the police as down know how they proceeed in these cases but its certainly not the right way forward is it. Plus people these days are on camera so why not approach the bank to see if money been withdrawn or the stores in question to ask can they look at their cctv cameras on the day in question. Just call me Miss Marple as my friends do when I can detect on tv series who is the "killer". But its not a funny situaiton however you look at it.