someone has charge over 100 £1 vodaphone charges to my Visa account

[clumsymum]

Which my bank have just rung to tell me about. I'm wondering
a) how they got my card details
b) why use it in such an obviously suspicious way?

It's the card we use just for housekeeping, all the groceries & petrol go on it, but nothing else. It only gets used on t'internet once a year, for our xmas Sainsbury's online order, otherwise, I put it in the cardreader myself in the supermarket/petrol station.

Has this happened to anyone else?

They are sending new cards today. Fortunately don't really need it now this week, all food now on-board. I think we've probably got more in stock than our local Spar.

Apparently it's common to have a small test purchase before the evil fraudsters really hammer your card (To check it's working I suppose.)

100 seems extreme though. Maybe not very clever fraudsters?

I had someone hijack my Mastercard in the summer. I eventually tracked back that the only place it could have happened was when I booked a b&b over the phone. Was very because they seemed like lovely people at the time.

i too have had a rarely used visa card used in this way. fortuntaly i spotted it within 12 hours. small initial purchase around £5 then two £350 purchases for visa in the us. got money back but hassle being without the card as its the only uk registered one we have so rather a pain as dh couldn;t buy train fares in advance when he was back in the Uk. Made me even more careful to check balances etc

At least they are sending new cards to you today.

Card details are easily obtained fradulently; all the fraudsters need is a bent employee to skim the cards. Your card probably got cloned at a petrol station (a common place for such fraud).

We had this with £1 in carphone warehouse which was them testing the card. Then they bought a nice juicy £50 top up and then tried to go on a shopping spree!

I think there are limits that trigger an investigation so the £1 over and over means they know they are getting away with it and hope to keep going.

This has just happened with £2 transactions to my mate at T-Mobile!

Attila is right you just need one dodgy employee to work in a shop or in some large company where they have access to your credit card details. My sister was done in a Travelodge!

Yes, thank God for Christmas and having enough food to feed a small nation