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Original poster

We think DH's debit card has been cloned.. anyone got any experience of this?

50 replies

ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 28/02/2007 20:00

Today's been pants.. I've got some kind of lurgy (some viral thing the kids have had) and spent most of the day in bed so didn't get online to do my online banking until late this afternoon. To my shock we were over £300 over our overdraft limit!

Rang bank and they told me all the transactions that have gone through in the last two days.. and they are all on DH's card.. amounts like £80 here.. £70 there.. amounting to over £300 in 2-3 days. We knew were close to our o/d limit and there is no way I or DH would have had a spending spree like that.. so intitially I thought maybe he card was missing/stolen..

I tried to phone him (he was picking DS1 up from an after school club) and I couldn't get thro for ages. Turns our he had gone to garage to fill car up, card was declined (so obviously not missing!) and he was going through ordeal of getting the payment authorised on the phone. . He was thinking "Why? I wonder what's come out..?" but going thro the process so he could leave the garage and dash off to get DS...!

Bank had asked me to get him to ring when he got back (as it is his card) and they have given all the times of the recent transactions. DH has been able to idenitfy those that he DID make (a couple of small Tesco payments). The rest he has no idea about..

He has to phone back in the morning when hopefully we will be able to see what the payment were for and I am hoping to God that they are for things and places we don't normally buy/spend money at so that we have a better chance of proving it wasn't DH. Am also assuming they must of been over the phone or online or else they would need a PIN as well, right?

We have put a stop on card but this is very scary. What is they don't believe it wasn't DH.. what if the money has been spent locally.. or it for goods not services so no delivery address needed giving?

Has anyone been through this??

I DID intitially scream at DH and say "Have you had a spending spree or what?" but he would have to be mad to have done that.. he knew we had no money and that it wouldn't go unnoticed!

We watched those scam programmes last year showing how cards gets scanned for cloning (either when taken away to process payment or restaurant for example) or sometimes right in front of customers when the card can be swipped discreetly on a piece of equipment about the scammer's person, and the details copied... but when you see it on the TV like that you sort of imagine this doesn't happen often. My mum reminded me that her Sainsburies credit card was used in this way a few years ago (she got the money back) even though she was still in possession of it.. so it is more common than I thought?

I feel sick.. we are so broke.. and when we get paid on Saturday we will STILL be broke because of the "missing £300" that we didn't even have in the first place!!!

OP posts:
Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 28/02/2007 20:06

Anyone? Badly want reassurance.. but feel to ill to sit here for long (I'll put my violin away now..)

OP posts:
JodieG1 · 28/02/2007 20:09

Happened to us, dh had his card cloned and used to buy almost £1000 of stuff online. We only found out when we checked online banking and saw lots of transactions that weren't ours. The bank was great and we got the money back within days.

possumhead · 28/02/2007 20:15

Hi,
My DH had his card cloned or someone copied the card details down without him realising. . He telephoned the bank as soon as he realised that there was a fairly large transaction that wasn't ours. The bank cancelled his cards and refunded his money! They will believe him as unfortunately it happens all the time
Hope you feel better soon.

Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 28/02/2007 20:18

Thank you both. Thing is, if the money has, perchance, been spent somewhere were we have shopped before.. or somewhere local.. how will we then prove it's not us?

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zippitippitoes · 28/02/2007 20:19

report it to the police as well as your bank as this may help get the criminals caught and help the retailers who have to stump up for chargebacks

it's highly unlikely that you will lose out

Heathcliffscathy · 28/02/2007 20:23

yes, more than once. worst time was mine to the tune of over 3K (mostly in spain!)

got it all back pretty swiftly. banks are insured for it.

x

Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 28/02/2007 20:26

God it's pants isn't it! I feel violated.. (almost). Bet the scammers will be gutted when they try to use it again and find that they can't because even if we hadn't put a stop on it, it would have declined now as we only have a small overdraft..

Must be terrible if you have large overdraft...!

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Theresa · 28/02/2007 20:32

yes about 15 years ago went to Rhodes on hol and had a day trip to Turkey. When my statement arrived there had been transactions in Greece, Turkey and Japan in the space of 2 weeks (looked quite impressive!). The 'dodgy' ones were all in Japan and for relatively small amounts, a few hundred pounds in total. CC company sent me a form t fill in declaring they weren;t my tansactions and they were cancelled, took a few months but all sorted in the end

JanH · 28/02/2007 20:33

Our egg credit card has been used like this recently, SJ - it's an online one so I spotted the first transaction (for a paltry £10), found out from merchant the name and address who had used it, notified egg, reported it to police etc etc etc - egg stopped the card supposedly, and then allowed 2 transactions through for £720 each - FFS they are always nagging us about phishing, security etc and then they can't even stop a fraudulent transaction after they've been notified!

Anyway we were refunded, after stropping, within about 10 days - it's v unlikely yours were local transactions, you will get it back, maybe they will increase your overdraft to cover it until sorted?

Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 28/02/2007 20:59

Thank you, you're making us feel a little better. Obviously it is much more commmon that I thought as 6 people have posted on this thread in less than an hour and those are just the mumnetters online this eve!!

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SaintGeorge · 01/03/2007 00:14

DO NOT USE DEBIT OR CREDIT CARDS AT PETROL STATIONS!

They are the No 1 'black spot' for card cloning.

Both our debit & credit cards were cloned at the same station. Luckily the bank spotted a suspicious transaction and froze out account immediately until they could speak to us. We then checked the credit card online and got Egg to freeze that account too. All of the fraudulent transactions that were attempted were in Mombasa!

Bubbaloo · 01/03/2007 07:47

Dh had his card cloned at a petrol station years ago and got his money back within about a week.
I had mine cloned at a Sainsburys cash point machine nearly 2 years ago and it was an absolute nightmare!
They took £2,000 from my accounts,I was 8 months pg at the time and the bank were horrendous and refused to refund my money.
In the end I got the financial Ombudsman involved and after 10 months "Abbey" decided as a "goodwill gesture" to refund it,plus they gave me £250 in compensation due to the stress they caused.
I was soooooo annoyed as I had banked with them for over 30 years,that I closed all my accounts with them and even moved the mortgage elsewhere.
Best of luck and hope he doesn't bank with them too.

Jillyadoodledoo · 01/03/2007 08:06

This also happened to DH over Christmas / New year, and to my Mum last month. In both cases there was no argument from the bank / credit card. The money was refunded almost immediately.
Have you got money to be going on with until the refund?

Bozza · 01/03/2007 08:15

Why petrol stations Stg?

We had some fraudelent transactions on our credit card over Christmas. Someone had used my credit card on DH's account to set up a paypal account and then made 3 transactions to american places and then we were bizarrely refunded in each case but slightly less than the full amount which was about £40 in each case. So we ended up about £5 down. We contacted Sainsburys and paypal regarding this and Sainsburys refunded the £5, stopped our cards and issued us with new ones. Before Christmas I ordered a lot of things online but most of them were from websites that I have used before - CD-Wow, HMV, Next etc without a problem. But I also ordered DH a subscription to Golfpunk magazine and we think that is where the security blip happened because there is mention of similar issues on the golfpunk message boards.

Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 01/03/2007 08:46

Crikey SG.. no I didn't know that about petrol stations.. why are they such a common place for card cloning to take place?

Bubaloo, that's dreadful! No, this is Barclays.. have yet to see how they're going to handle it. The actual transactions are still not showing on our online banking page, just the scary minus balance.. I I am hoping the bank themsevles will be able to see more than we can. DH will phone when he gets back from school run.

Jilly no, money will be a bit of a problem; I asked the bank what we are supposed to do about that, they said other than upping the overdraft limit (which I have done at the moment just to cover the stolen £300 odd) but we do get paid on Sat so we will have to try and manage by using the new o/d amount up to the max. (Which makes me cringe!! We have only ever had a small o/d, we can't afford a large one at the best of times..)

OP posts:
Jillyadoodledoo · 01/03/2007 09:15

Make sure that you aren't out of pocket with regards to any charges as well. Just in case they charge you for upping your o/d or going over it in the first place.

Are you feeling any better today btw?

bran · 01/03/2007 09:15

Petrol stations are the prime locations for skimming because they generally have a high staff turnover, they are relatively unsupervised and they handle a lot of cards. Restaurants and even supermarket checkouts can also be good locations for people wanting to skim, my card was cloned once at IKEA. If you have any transaction where where the person with your card appears to fumble or drop it then check your transactions carefully for the next few days as they may have swiped it through a hidden reader to get your details. If you use chip and pin then try and shield the keypad with your other hand so that your pin is kept secret.

RedTartanLass · 01/03/2007 09:16

A similar thing happened to friend of mine from a card machine at Tescos's .

Apparently what happens, is that the thieves put a false cover over the machine which has a wee camera in it. When you put your card in, it "clones" it and they also have your pin number.

The police said that these false fronts are quite flimsy, so every time I use a cashpoint machine I give it a good pulling at , you should see peoples' faces!!!

My friend got her money back BTW.

JanH · 01/03/2007 10:07

With our recent fraud, they had our address too, so it wasn't a clone - I do not know how they managed that.

Bozza · 01/03/2007 10:24

Jan do you think it could have been internet fraud? I must admit I was somewhat unnerved about our minor fraud so I can understand how you are feeling shinyhappy.

TheBlonde · 01/03/2007 10:26

JanH - the fraudster may have bought your details from a call centre worker in India - I think there was some bbc prog on it a while back

kookaburra · 01/03/2007 10:44

Mine has been cloned twice, tho'have never written down my pin. Bank was great - refunded money in amtter of days - you have to send back the card first, report to police and get a crime number. The police told me that as it is the BANKS money that is stolen, up tio them to pursue the criminal investigation - so yours should give you back the money and THEN investigate. Still don't know how it happened, tho' second time had used it in TK MA** and DH said he'd heard there was a big fraud uncovered there.
I now pay 2.50 a month to get daily text messages of the transactions so I can be alerted quickly. Also, now only keep minimal amount in my current account.

Original poster
ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHands · 01/03/2007 11:25

We now now it is over £400 that has been stolen (not that the money was ever there to "take"!) And worse still we've got to wait until tomorrow because it is still not showing up as to what the transactions actually are; we only know the amounts and the times they were put through. And if they don't show up tomorrow, then MONDAY.. arrgh!!!

No I am no better really Jilly thanks for asking, but I have just had a bath and put on clothes and makeup to make myself feel more normal because I just don't have the sort of life that enables me to enjoy the luxury of laying about, ill or not (I know few of us do!). My temp was 38.6 last night.. highest it's been since i have been an adult I'm sure..

And DD has woken up with chicken pox today I just want to get this bank thing sorted. The bank is still making the statement "..if this proves to be fraud...". We KNOW damn well it is.. why would be spent £400 that wasn't there??!! I want to get it sorted now!

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Jillyadoodledoo · 01/03/2007 11:30

Poor you! They should at least stop more coming out of the account!!

We were quite lucky with our cloning as his online banking showed us pretty much what had been spent and on what (mostly train tickets, an overseas courier service, mobile topups). DH really wanted to get the details of the train tickets and go and meet them at the station

JanH · 01/03/2007 11:31

bozza, according to the PC who came round to log the complaint (sweet little chap, looked about 15 but claimed to have a wife!) internet transactions really are the most secure - as long as they are https and have the little padlock.

Phone transactions are wide open, they rely completely on the honesty of the individual taking your details

It's so hard to remember what you did when, especially around Christmas when cards get such a hammering. TB, the India call centre thing is a new one on me - none of our banking is done via one but I wonder about some of the mobile phone companies?