Last week I found a transaction on my bank statement, via my debit card, that wasn't mine.
Needless to say I was grilled by my bank as they sought to try and prove that it was me or someone known to me using my card. OK, it's "only" £40.00 but it's MY £40.00. When the transaction was made, I was 10-and-a-half miles away from my purse and therefore my card, which was under lock and key at home. It's a mobile phone top-up to Vodafone; I'm an O2 customer. Cue the question, "Isn't O2 part of Vodafone?".
Given that chip-and-pin cards are now all the rage (and still a waste of time and effort, fail to see how they would deter anyone with intent), it could be a typo (it was a phone transaction) and the card number might have been entered wrong, but my 3-digit "security" code on the back as well? But the joke is that it will take my bank up to 28 days to investigate the matter, at the end of which THEY will decide whether or not to stop the card and issue a new one. To safeguard my account, I had to stop it myself.
You'd think if they're making such a huge song and dance about card fraud, etc., that there would be a bit more of a reaction. Or is it because, as they say, it's ONLY £40.00?!
I know I won't get anywhere with Vodafone but I thought I'd drop them an email and point out that they accepted a fraudulent transaction, cos I needed to vent my spleen.
I had the opposite experience. An amount of only £26.00 payable to Oasis, I presume the clothes store. I have never bought anything there and wasn't in town on the day in question.
The bank refunded it immediately and said that if they found proof that I purchased whatever the item was, ie. a receipt with my signature on (this was before chip and pin) they would contact me further.
Never heard anything again, but was impressed that I was given the benefit of the doubt and the onus was on them to prove that I had spent the money, rather than the other way around.
*It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. -- Pierre De Beaumarchais
I got the 40 quid back off the bank but it turns out that on the same day, what I thought was my genuine payment to O2 ... wasn't. The money I paid them has never been allocated to my account so they're now investigating my theory that the member of their staff that I gave my card details to, with which to pay the account, actually used them to top up an O2 phone as well as a Vodafone. The transactions took place within 6 minutes of one another, and originated, or can be traced to, within miles of one another - one in Slough and one in Newbury.
The only good thing is, that my O2 bill (I'm on contract, not pre-pay) is being credited with the balance I arranged to pay, the 30 quid that has been debited from my account and with any luck, some sort of compensation as well.
