Credit card fraud

[megabitch]

Got my monthly c/card statement today. Glance at the total, as usual, seems about right. Quick skim down the payments made....

O2(UK)LTD PREPAY SLOUGH £15
O2(UK)LTD PREPAY SLOUGH £15

Both on the same day. I'm not with O2. Neither is anyone else in the family. All our phones are Voda. Google happens. Lots of similar stories. Oh, fun.

Ring bank, dispute transactions. They immediately refunded the money and told me to call the Lost/Stolen line to get card replaced. And to call them again if I have any concerns about any other transactions. I told them that there's another one that I don't recall to EA Games for 26.99, but that could easily be me paying for a game for D and him paying me back from his allowance/birthday money. I have to wait until he gets home from school and see if his memory is better than mine. Thing is, there's no corresponding email in either my mailbox or D's for any purchase on the date concerned :/

Random browsing of the things Google threw up suggest that the fraudulent Top-Up transactions are used to confirm an account is active before hitting it with bigger purchases/withdrawals.

Leaving this public for the moment so that others can see it and be warned.

Edit to add: the EA Games one was as I suspected, me paying for games for D - it came up in the email with the name of the website rather than EA Games who own the site.

Comments

[mrscosmopilite.livejournal.com]

a warning to all to check the statements properly.
I admit to being anal about both bank and CC statements, checking them off meticulously and shouting loudly if someone else (i.e himself) has made a transaction and not entered it in the accounts. mainly because it takes so much time tot track down what has happened, especially if he isn't actually there.
Thank goodness you checked.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Yes, always worth checking the statement. I have on occasion gone 'What the heck is that?!', only to discover by dint of Googling™ that my dentist (for example) has a totally different account name from the name I'd have guessed.

Coming back from holidays is always interesting - but then that's why you're supposed to keep the slips, so you have a better chance of matching things up.

[uitlander]

One thing to note is that at east one credit card provider is now applying a fee to check credit card charges if a debit is queried. If the debit is found to be erroneous the fee will be removed, but not if the debit was legit. I do not recall which company is involved, but do recall seeing this change reported in the press.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I've never actually queried a credit card charge with the company since I've always managed to determine what the charge actually is before I got to that stage. Happily, there's always been enough information on the online statement so far for me to work it out without diving into the wad of paper at the back of the wallet.

[megabitch.livejournal.com]

HSBC didn't even make any noises about checking - I suspect that this is most definitely a known issue and they just automatically reversed the charge. I guess this means that O2 will have the joy of trying to track the buggers down.

[hobnobs.livejournal.com]

I tend to check my credit card balance online regularly, mostly so I know how much I'm due to pay on the next statement, and once caught a £200+ fraudulent transaction from some online store in Germany before it'd even been cleared. (although a smaller transaction at a Pizza place had been cleared a day or so before that, which I didn't catch in time.)

I'm pretty certain where the card details were stolen too, as I rarely use the card outside of a few select companies that I've used for years. Except that I had needed to use it at a store the week before the fraud as I'd no money on me at all.

Edit: Just to note; The EA payment may be several days out (or weeks, if it was a pre-order) receipt wise, as they occasionally send the receipt when the order is received, and then charge when the game ships.

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

Nationwide spotted the same transactions on my current account and stopped the card for me last month. They didn't tell me they were posting a written confirmation for me to sign and return within a short window though so I missed it while I was away. Fortunately they've sent another which is now signed and ready to post as soon as it stops flaming raining!

[purpresture.livejournal.com]

I was really impressed with the Co-op (with whom I have a credit card) who rang me to question two similar "top-up" mobile payments, as their system had noticed two transactions on the same day and that I'd never done a top-up payment to any mobile phone provider before. Turns out my card had been cloned.