Some bastard cloned my wife’s debit card and sucked our current account dry - and then some; it is £1,100 overdrawn right now, Grrr.
Oh, we’ll get it all back; fraud indemnity is built into the account terms, we’ll even get the bank charges refunded from exceeding the overdraft limit, but still Grrr.
Sorry, lame rant, but I’m sitting here now knowing that the statement and transaction dispute paperwork won’t arrive until at least Tuesday. Grr…
Sorry to hear about this, but it might be helpful in preventing similar disasters happening to to others if you could describe how the thieves managed to copy the card (if you know, of course).
I’m not sure if we’ll ever find out, but anything we do learn, I’ll be sure to pass on.
I’m thinking about setting up a Cahoot Webcard - apparently it is like a credit card account, but there is no plastic; when you want to buy something, you log into your account and enter the details, they give you a single-use credit card number with its own credit limit, so it will only work with the item you’re about to buy. After making the purchase, the card ‘dies’, so it doesn’t matter if anyone has grabbed the details somehow.
The daft thing was that the bank phoned her to discuss it, but asked her to verify her identity by divulging the account number, sort code, her DOB, and one of the security words - on returning home and hearing this, I was in an absolute panic - how were we to verify that it really was the bank phoning us? - that could have been the card thief on the phone, masquerading as a bank employee in order to get fuller access to our account.
But apparently this is standard practice now - my advice would be that if someone telephones claiming to be a representative of your bank, tell them that you will not give out important information to incoming callers and that you will call back, then look the number up in the phone book and use that (don’t let them tell you the number to call back, obviously).
Oh, I don’t know. Why not get the number from them, then look up the bank’s number, and if they don’t match, you’ve got the crook’s number to report to the police? More likely, if it is a crook they won’t give you the number and you’ve smoked them out.
Fraud sucks. I’ve had my SSN in the US ‘stolen’ and some fucknugget opened about a dozen store cards and mobile phone accounts. I’ve now got fraud alerts posted with the credit agencies, but re-establishing credit if I move back to the US is gonna suck.
A couple months ago I had a message on the answerphone claiming to be from my local branch bank with a question about my account. The area code didn’t look right, so I looked it up online. I knew it was a scam because Lloyds TSB doesn’t use mobile phones in its call centres.
Mangetout - not that I was trying to trivialise your problem. Fraud is extremely sucky. But I didn’t want such a beautiful specimen of profanity to go past unrecognised…