check your bank statements!!!!

[chicken]

I have just found out I am the victim of mail fraud. The way it works is that your bank sends a new chequebook to you. It gets intercepted by someone in the post office system but you don't know because you didn't actually request a new chequebook (they get sent out periodically by the banks).

The thief then sits on the blank chequebook for a few months before buying mail order goods and services with the cheques. The sellers are happy to send the items because the cheques do get cleared (as long as there are funds in your account).

The only reason I realised I had been had was that I happened to check my statement this month (which I don't normally do). I asked my wife whether she had written such a large cheque and she said she had a vague memory that she had but I had already ordered a copy of the cheque from the bank.

When it arrived, she was shocked to see that the handwriting and signature was not even close to hers. She was livid and wanted to prosecute the b@stard that did this but the bank said that this is very very common and it is very rare that they catch the crooks.

Fortunately we will get the money back (about £900 in all) but they money could so easily have gone down the drain.

And before you ask, Yes I would miss a thousand pounds but I am so disorganised financially that I wouldn't know.

[bradders]

ta for the heads up...have you seen that Indian data/call centre employees are now selling data for £3 a pop??? Worrying....no wonder contracts I am working on at the mo are insiting on a UK only data clause

[TP]

Originally posted by bradders
ta for the heads up...have you seen that Indian data/call centre employees are now selling data for £3 a pop??? Worrying....no wonder contracts I am working on at the mo are insiting on a UK only data clause

That's very common. I'm working on a project that is consolidating all the data storage (file servers, not databases yet) across EMEA. We are running into these problems with a few European countries that have laws around storage of personal data in the country of origin.

[Rattler]

I reckon with all this fraud and uncertainty, I'm gonna move my money to the Bank of UMMAH. - Under My Mattress At Home !!!! ;)

[Desmondo]

I use my online banking and check my account every morning. I'd pick something like this up pretty quickly. Glad to hear yours is being sorted out though Chi

[chicken]

Originally posted by Desmondo
I use my online banking and check my account every morning.

It's a lot easier to look at a bunch of positive numbers than a bunch of negative numbers everyday!

[Desmondo]

Who said they were positive? :lol:

[nelly]

You better have high ceilings................

You'd be rubbing your nose on the light shade :P :lol:

Originally posted by Rattler
I reckon with all this fraud and uncertainty, I'm gonna move my money to the Bank of UMMAH. - Under My Mattress At Home !!!! ;)

[chicken]

aha! It's Mister Cornerspeed, a soon to be beneficiary of my new-found wealth!

[skidlids]

I have been up the bank this morning to chase up on non authorised withdrawls from my bank.
Firstly it was a Debit of £1400 payable to Visa, they have refunded that after I filled in the disput paperwork, all they have done is re-credit my account no explanation or even a letter saying the funds were back there. At the time I didn't cancel my Debit card as it may well have been (and still could be a) Bank error, what they did o is increase my overdraft by the same amount. Next I had two more Debits this time to AOL both on the same day and both for £15.99. So I again phoned the disputed department. This was a month ago still no paperwork all I have had since then is a £25 charge on my account for the extra overdraft and another letter saying they would be removing my overdraft facility at the end of the month.
So when I popped into my branch today all they did was arrange for my overdraft to return to my previous level and then try and get me to upgrade to a Platinum account and also take out one of their credit cards.

After 24 years with the same bank and 20 years at the same branch it looks like its time for a change. :mad:
Todays visit

[jodycraw]

My switch card must have been cloned whilst I was in Spain, when I went to France someone withdrew 2000 euros out of my current account over 2 days before HSBC called me to ask me about it.

My switch card was cancelled and I was issued a new one. A couple of weeks after that I was enquiring where my new card had got to and I got a phone call 10 mins later to ask me if I'd used my new card for some large transactions in London. It turns out it was "intercepted" and someone spent another £2500 courtesy of me!!

I think i'll take all my cash out and put it under my pillow too......... And I'm seeking compensation from HSBC now because they've been so incompetent and for the inconvenience (I've still not been refunded and it was a month and a half ago)

[psychlist]

..but nobody ever fraudulently deposits £1 million in it! :o

[BDG]

Pah!!! Bank Accounts. I'm in the Rattler camp.

i much prefer cash and always walk round with a minimum of 500,000 in my wallet, shame its an old Turkish Lira note worth about 3 quid. Just nice to carry half a million about and try and use it in restaurants to pay bills.

One place actually gave me a 250,000 note in change and said i could have a free meal if they could keep the half a million note. I declined and paid.

Seriously fraud is BIG BIG business.

[Jools]

On the flip side of the coin, I have a Morgan Stanley credit card that I've given up using, simply because every single time I used it they would refer it through to the fraud department.

It has plenty of credit limit, I pay the whole bill each month and also have a direct debit setup so that if, by a slim chance, I forget to pay them they still get a payment each month. In all respects I'm a model customer....and yet, every time I used the card they left me standing by a checkout somewhere going through five minutes fraud rigmarole.

Once, and only once, I signed a cheque on this account to pay for my sons Uni fees because I had mislaid my current account chequebook. You guessed it, I got a call from their fraud department as soon as it was presented to check that I had actually written the cheque out.

I guess too much zealous fraud detection is better than not enough, but it's driven me to the point where I simply don't use my card....

While we're at it, has anybody else noticed that every Nat West cashpoint has a sign saying to report it if there is anything suspicious about the ATM machine, and then the ATM takes your card in a very graunchy way as if the embossed letters are rubbing on the top of the slot - for all the world as if someone has put some sort of skimmer device in there. I thought it was just my local branch, but they're all like it.

[Paul James]

I reckon American Express must be one of the safest cos their charges are so dreadful than nobody accepts them :roll:

I had a problem with my Barclaycard when on a bike trip abroad. Apparently the card was being used to buy petrol at service stations so far apart so quickly that the same person couldn't have been using it. Whoops !!! too many "splash and dash" tank fulls.

Seems they fail to strike a balance, it's either too harsh or letting people get away with daft amounts on your card.

[crm250]

Yes jools i noticed that too, i thought i had sat on my card once to often and it was a bit twisted, but yes they are all like that now, new card or old

[guest1]

Originally posted by skidlids
....Next I had two more Debits this time to AOL both on the same day and both for £15.99. So I again phoned the disputed department.

Wife had her bag nicked out of the car about 3 years ago and last year we got a whole stack of questionable cheques from Liverpool police. Each one was for 15:99 or less and at shops like bargain booze. Why 15:99? - because anything over that and the transaction would need to have been verified (or so we were told).

[philthy]

Easy way to prevent fraud on your account

1. Get married

2. Get massive mortgage

3. Have three kids

=

NEVER any money in account to steal

Credit / Debit card always declined

Overdraft constantly on maximum limit

Problem solved !

:eureka:

[aws]

This follows on from a thread about 4 weeks ago.
I too had seen 1x transaction that I never authorised via The Ring webs site.
On Thursday they emailed me after 5 weeks of me emailing and calling Germany and agreed to pay me back.
We'll see if they do / don't.

A second one that is still on-going is a payment of £115 made to my credit card which they say they never received / cashed it, yet the amount has been taken from my account.
So I have had a photocopy done of said cheque by The Abbey and await the credit card's comments.

You have to watch EVERYTHING like a bolddy hawk I tell you.

Tim

[antonye]

I currently have an ongoing dispute over a credit card that was never even authorised (as I only used it for the 0% offer to transfer a balance around) and yet it still got payments made on it in the States to a mail order company that only ships in the states!
How they ever managed to get it through the checks amazes me as the card had never been activated and they weren't send to the registered address for the card either.
The amount is minimal (£12) but luckily I spotted it before the "big one".


Jools - the motion you describe is created by the reader and is called a "jigger" which is designed to stop the theives installing the "Lebanese Loop" and other devices which will hold your card and then be retrieved at a later point. It's one of a new range of security measures to stop card theft at the terminals.