Credit Card Fraud

[Mudster]

I stopped a fraudulent transaction through my business yesterday, it wasn't the most complex of cons as Paddy O'Murphy gave me an American company name at an irish address with a Nigerian phone number and was fundamentally illiterate...but hey ho...

So I called Streamline (my card service provider) to run through the details and inform them of the stolen card details....firstly, I had to pay to do this...not just a premium rate number but a £3 fee for checking the address....nice.

I provided them with the card number, they told me the name and address didn't match and it was an American card......OK I thought, I've done my good deed for the day....the conversation then followed along the lines of...

Me:- "I've got the guys email address, a phone number and details of where he's asking for the goods to be shipped. Would you like these to pass on to the police?"

Streamline - "We've informed the bank there's nothing more we can do".

Me:- "Well don't you want to catch the people committing these frauds?"

Streamline " The bank have been informed the card is cloned"

Me:- "So your not going to even try and catch these people or pass their details to the police?"

Streamline - "What exactly do you expect me to do with the information?"

Me - "Err, how about pass it onto to whoever investigates the frauds?"

Streamline - "We've done all we can, thank you and goodbye".....


What a waste of time.

 

[MikeL]

Having got back from Vegas/San Francisco last month - discovered fraud on Lloyds/Amex card.

No guess for where the fraud started!
They started about three days before we returned to the UK.
The transactions were mostly Spanish telecom and amounted to (eventually) approx £2k, spread over 10 to 11 transactions.

Here's the thing, the first fraud was reported when there were only three attempts, yet Lloyds continued to process transactions for another ten days or so. It wasn't until we suggested changing cards that new ones were offered.

Now am I being stupid or are Lloyds slow off the mark here?
Also, as of 9 weeks down the line we are still waiting for forms to fill in to confirm the fraud.

As an aside while all this was going on we received a £140 credit from an unrelated and un-used by us British company!

Barclays a few years ago stopped the card after the first noted fraud and blocked all further activity.

Finally, for anyone travelling to the States - we had two card transactions turned down because the card was within 90 days of expiring.

Mike

 

[Sp!ke]

Yes, I share similar experiences when running some online shops.

We used to manually double check each order before shipment and you get a 6th sense for dodgy purchases.

We found that if we cancelled and then reported the attempted transaction, often the cardholders bank would at some point in the future issue a chargeback even though we had refunded the the card right at the outset, meaning now the card issuer had taken the money back twice over. Recovering these funds from the banks was nigh on impossible. Often taking over six months to achieve, sometimes over a year and now and again we never got refunded.

In the end with suspicious orders we'd phone the customer and if we were still undecided, we'd just not ship the order and wait for a chargeback.

Unbelievable that the system forces retailers to not notify the banks of a card problem.

Even more shocking is that you would think that the banks would have created a shared investigation/fraud prevention organisation. An organisation that would investigate trends, track down dealers of card numbers and manufacturing equipment or other technologies like skimmers. But no, there is no such thing. Losses are insured and nobody cares.

grumble grumble.

 

[Mudster]

It's the charge backs that hurt, some people do them as a hobby as a means of earning an extra bit of cash on the side.

For all you out there than think Credit Cards are guaranteed payments to the seller, think again, every time I take a credit card I take a risk I'm shipping goods and won't see the money as there's no way I can stop a charge back from a bank.

As a result, large transactions (over £3000 - £4000) I simply won't take by credit card, I'll only accept irrevocable payments, either debit card (which have a £5000 max usually) or bank transfer.

 

[Dragon]

Having got back from Vegas/San Francisco last month - discovered fraud on Lloyds/Amex card.

No guess for where the fraud started!
They started about three days before we returned to the UK.
The transactions were mostly Spanish telecom and amounted to (eventually) approx £2k, spread over 10 to 11 transactions.

Here's the thing, the first fraud was reported when there were only three attempts, yet Lloyds continued to process transactions for another ten days or so. It wasn't until we suggested changing cards that new ones were offered.

Now am I being stupid or are Lloyds slow off the mark here?
Also, as of 9 weeks down the line we are still waiting for forms to fill in to confirm the fraud.

As an aside while all this was going on we received a £140 credit from an unrelated and un-used by us British company!

Barclays a few years ago stopped the card after the first noted fraud and blocked all further activity.

Finally, for anyone travelling to the States - we had two card transactions turned down because the card was within 90 days of expiring.

Mike

Time to move on to another bank.

 

[big x]

It's the charge backs that hurt, some people do them as a hobby as a means of earning an extra bit of cash on the side.

For all you out there than think Credit Cards are guaranteed payments to the seller, think again, every time I take a credit card I take a risk I'm shipping goods and won't see the money as there's no way I can stop a charge back from a bank.

As a result, large transactions (over £3000 - £4000) I simply won't take by credit card, I'll only accept irrevocable payments, either debit card (which have a £5000 max usually) or bank transfer.

On the charge backs does keeping proof of delivery reverse it ?

Credit card companies aren't all bad, today Goldfish rang me on my mobile to say I was 3 days late paying my Morgan Stanley card and if I paid the minimum over the phone they would waiver the late payment charges. Given that this is a 9 month at 0% card I thought that was good service.

BTW charge backs can also be done if you've used a card through Paypal. I once bought something from Ebay USA that was not as described.
After the seller ignored my email I shipped it back using a signed for service. I then wrote to my credit card company enclosing the documentation asking for a charge back. I got refunded the purchase price and the original shipping cost. It's then up to Paypal to get the money back from the seller.

 

[Sp!ke]

On the charge backs does keeping proof of delivery reverse it ?

From my experience.... no.

Even with the signature of the cardholder on the POD, If the card holder claims he did not receive it then thats it. the chargeback stays. There's no arguement, no arbitration and well my experience was that my bank said it was between me and the CC company and the CC company basically ignored me.

 

[Mudster]

On the charge backs does keeping proof of delivery reverse it ?

It depends on the card provider, the big boys are geared for this and take it seriously, but many providers don't, they will just process the charge back and you have to deal with it through the court system, which in many cases would cost more than retrieving the money, so you give up and write it off, which is exactly why they play it this way.

I did once take a credit card transaction for £17,000 (it was a deposit). I knew the customer, He is actually listed on the Sunday Times rich list and He'd bought from me on a few occasions. I was comfortable taking this but my bank had kittens. They actually threatened to reduce my overdraft by £17K as they actually look at the credit card facilities as a line of credit and considered this an unreasonable risk, even though the goods wouldn't be delivered for another 6 weeks.

This gives you an idea how much trust the banks themselves have in credit cards.....

 

[jaymanek]

One fine morning 3 nigerians turned up to look at an E270 CDI for £16995...

No negotiation, no test drive, they paid for the car on switch with a pin number. It WAS his card as he showed me passport and identification..
his address was valid.

I was suspicius so I did the same as Mudster and paid the £3 to streamline only them to tell me he was who he says and they cant do anything more, i should carry on with the transaction.

I got a call from the police about an hour later, it was fraudulent.

Someone on the inside had momentarily transferred funds into his account and then pulled them again after the transaction (some loophle in the barclays system)..

Anyway, although helping them, police were very very slow to react.. they only went to his home address days afterwards and of course they must have pulled a number of these scams and left the country.

I was of course very worried that i had lost £17K. It turns out that if I had swiped the card i would have taken the risk of fraudulent transactions but as it was chip and pin i was safe as the onus is now on the bank...