To think the bank should refund us

[broccolibush]

I noticed a transaction on my bank account that wasn’t authorised by either DH or me - for nearly £1,000 to a taxi company in South America - so called the bank to report it as a fraudulent transaction and ask for the money to be returned. It was a debit card payment.

We don’t spend using debit cards on the account (do day to day spending on credit cards and clear the balance every month) and we’re in the UK not in South America. The bank have said that the payment was made using chip and pin and have refused to accept it was fraudulent as the card is still in our possession, albeit many thousands of miles from where the transaction was made.

AIBU to think that there is no way a debit card in the UK could have been legitimately used for a chip and pin transaction in South America and that as a result refusing to accept this as fraud because the card is in our possession is insane? Has anyone else been in a similar situation and found a way to get their money back? I don’t fancy being £1k down to a criminal aided by the bank.

@broccolibush the response from your bank is awful.
I had a text about my "apple pay" not working with a link to a website...thing is I have an "olde worlde" brick phone that doesn't do t'interweb and I don't have any apples except the odd couple left in the fruit bowl.
Stick to your guns. Maybe write them a letter - they probably won't know what to do with it.
Put everything else on your credit card and open a bank account with someone else (we have more than 1) then get your salary and DDs transfered. Nationwide are ok.

Oh good idea. I'll add that to my list of things to do come Monday as frankly nobody is going to deal with it today are they.

Honestly I don't know how they think refusing this is going to fly. It clearly wasn't us. We were in the UK and they know it due to card use, we don't use our debit cards (DH only did on this occasion because his credit card was declined - seemingly due to some kind of fraud device on the point of sale machine), there are police reports of the same thing happening at the same station in the same week and all manner of other reasons. Besides its for them to prove we authorised it not the other way round.

Have now cried at 2 people from the bank today. And my anxiety medication is out of stock due to a manufacturing issue. Will go and have a pity party somewhere.

There was a section on Watchdog about bank fraud and refunds this week. It was on a Wednesday’s One Show.
I bank with First Direct though and have never had any problems.

I don’t know if this is available in the UK but it’s what we have here with our bank (Bank of America) and it stopped a similar thing happening:

We have the online banking app on our phones. The app constantly tracks the location of your phone when the phone is on. If the debit card is used in a different location to where your phone is, it’s rejected. One morning at 3 am someone tried to use a clone of my husband’s debit card to buy gas around 50 miles from where we live. We were asleep in our home at the time. The person tried three times and each time it was rejected because the phone was located 50 miles away.

It can be a mess if you go out and forget your phone and want to use your debit card. But I’d rather have that inconvenience for the security that we have.

TSB have a fraud refund guarantee OP (this is where you say that’s who you’re with 😮‍💨) and I would personally recommend First Direct and Monzo to bank with also.

I bank with Halifax and they always check with me before they allow an unusual transaction to be made, even once between my own accounts with them (withdrawing savings, I never do that 🤣). DH banks with tsb and their fraud team even phoned him to tell him about attempted fraud before he knew about it, he'd bought something online from what turned out to be a fake version of a well known sports shops website, and they had cloned his card. So if you want a new bank there's 2 good ones 🙂

Really hope you get sorted, and hopefully some compensation on top for the stress.

Clearly you haven't given anyone your details so they must refund you. Yes, please say which bank it is.

And who spends £1000 on a taxi anyway? Surely this should flag something up. Sounds like a failure of their security system to me.

God help you if its Lloyd's. Eels must envy their slipperiness.
My friend's dh greatest wish is to bring them down.
Whenever Ic watch Mary Poppins and they go in that old bank I always think of Lloyd's.

This happened to us and we are in canada! It was a charge from Tokyo using Amazon.ja. Our backs absolutely REFUSED to refund it and told us we needed to contact amazon to fix it but all the reps spoke japanese and refused to help us. We managed to get someone who spoke broken english and they told us they wouldn’t help. We kicked up a fuss with the bank and they insisted it was us and they would not help. WE DON’T SPEAK JAPANESE AND WE ARE NOT FROM JAPAN. NO RECEIPTS OF VISITING JAPANESE WHY WOULD WE MAKE A PURCHASE ON AMAZON.JA???

We were out $300 and the bank would not help. We were forced to switch banks over it as we had to get food from the food bank to feed our family as we were out of grocery money because of it. This was right after I gave birth too so we felt so vulnerable. 😔

We felt betrayed. We made sure the next bank had decent fraud policies but we now have trust issues with banks because of it. They didn’t protect us. We tried to fight it for three months but nothing came of it. At one point someone actually accused us of lying. All of the evidence was clear we did not make this purchase. How could they do this to us?

Ex bank staff here.
You can't raise a direct debit as it was a DD payment, however you should absolutely log a complaint and if they do not resolve it satisfactorily then you can take it to the ombudsman.. You need to log the complaint with the bank first though.

How is someone using your card fraudulently not fraud?

I’m with Nationwide and Amex from my credit card. I can give you recommended a friend offers on both if you like.

I think it's worth you getting in touch with finance journalist Paul Lewis twitter.com/paullewismoney?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor - you can message him on Twitter, who is usually shit hot at getting results out of finance organisations who do a bad job. He's the presenter of R4 Money Box.

My mum had her card cloned at a petrol station and someone spent a thousand in canada a few years ago but shegot money back, tsb i think
We use halifax and starling and i have to approve pretty much every transaction I do via the app

Switch to first direct. Currently offering £175 pp to switch. Paying for our Xmas

I think the worst part about it was I needed antibiotics for a uterine infection and I couldn’t get the antibiotics. Thank goodness our midwives took pity on me and got me samples to get me through.

Halifax once refunded me for something I did buy online but turned out it was a scam site
They refunded the transaction and were really helpful , it was about £40 tbf but still just before xmas and really needed the money

You do realise the Ombudsman won't do anything at this point? You have to make a formal complaint to your bank and either wait for a Final Response Letter or for 8 weeks to elapse and then escalate to the FOS.

May have already been suggested but I have not had time to read everything - perhaps try the Resolver website. They have sorted out 3 claims for me now - works very well.

OP has told us without telling us. It's got to be one of NatWest group so either that or RBS realistically.

Definitely formal complaint route and phone the head office fraud team.. Cloned cards and chip and pin are not unheard of and the bank will know this.

As an extra, do you have any card transactions that can prove that you were in the UK during the time of purchase? That would be any transaction around that date taking the flying time to South America into account.

I know you meant that. It is.

My most important point that I always make to people over matters like this is NEVER follow their instructions to cut the card through the chip and destroy it. That chip records actual transactions made with the card. The chip can be read by an independent fraud investigator to prove actual card usage. (I fully realise that this may not apply in this case: a remote transaction like OP’s problem)

However, whoever this bank is, they’re definitely pushing their luck with this blatant fraud. I guess in these difficult times it’s probably a new bank policy of ‘screw the customer wherever possible’.

Persist, persist, persist. Do not give up. You will win. The card being used in the UK close to the time of the fraud is perfect proof for you OP.

It’s ridiculous how the banks are behaving recently over matters like this. Threats to close your account if you don’t bend over and take their crap is disgusting behaviour.

My bank, Nationwide, used to be brilliant at fraud detection like this, phoning us, for example, to ask if we were in a Dubai casino buying £2,000 worth of gambling chips, BUT not anymore unfortunately.

A recent similar event, followed by absolutely appalling customer service, has persuaded us to chuck it in with them. (good customers, current+savings, with them for 37 years) They were extremely rude IN WRITING to us. (I’m an old fart who still uses email)

I was so astonished at the outright rudeness that I asked for confirmation from Swindon that the email was genuine, and not hacked. They said yes, genuine, and if I felt I had to take my business elsewhere, they would ‘fully understand’.

Absolutely gobsmacked…