Wheres my money??

[DianaS]

Last month I went through my statement and there was around 4 transactions via two seperate garages linked to well-known superstores for petrol that I couldn't verify.
There would be two transactions put through one for aound £31, another the same day for £45. Knowing that my car only takes £35 of diesel I was and still am confused.
However I thought I would do an experiment.
This month I stopped using chip and pin and my statement has come through and there are no transactions I can't verify.
I feel as though I need to raise this and am considering the most effective course of action. If the fault is with my bank they are unlikely to put their hands up and I will need proof. If the fault is withthe garages I'll have to prove that I didn't authoriise those transactions. Unfortunatley I didn't keep transaction slips!
I'm now either going to raise it with my bank and see if when I go back to chip and pin and keep all of those transaction slips whether some rogue ones slip in ...
or I'm going to do it quietly via trading standards

I would be very interested to hear via PM from anyone who has had similar issues and how they were resolved. These will be kept confidential but will help me personally
:confused: or HEY just post to the thread!
There's nothing like a good outing!! :yeah:
DIANA

[Clive Long]

Last month I went through my statement and there was around 4 transactions via two seperate garages linked to well-known superstores for petrol that I couldn't verify.
There would be two transactions put through one for aound £31, another the same day for £45. Knowing that my car only takes £35 of diesel I was and still am confused.
<< SNIP >>
DIANA
Would this help for the two particular transactions? My ideas only.

Find out from the card company where & when exactly the petrol purchasese were made.
Work out the previous history & pattern of diesel purchases on your card
point out that these petrol transactions are "irregular"
The card company could counter-claim you were purchasing petrol for someone else.

If the place from where you are said to have bought the petrol is a fair distance from where you bought the diesel you could suggest its highly implausible you drove in tandem with someone else to another location to buy petrol on your card.

Can you draw a little map / time plot that shows where and when the card was used for all purchases that day and show it was impossible / implausible for the card to physically be where they claimed it was for the time the petrol purchases were made?

Are you sure no one else had access to your card and PIN during the day? (I think that's the explanation for the mysterious case of the missing tea-bags I am currently investigating ..)

If the time and location of the purchases is from one petrol station, do they have CCTV evidence that you used the card three time in quick succession?
Won't Swinging Bees and UnderPar be good on knowing what counts as "admissible evidence" (or whatever the term is)?
If the card company don't resolve & all else fails write to Customer Services saying you are going to close the accounts and write to Radio 4 Money Box - and carry it through if they face you off.

BTW I always keep all my transaction slips and tick them off the statements as they come in. Mainly because I don't trust any of 'em. I have had two questions regarding transactions in twenty years. I have phoned up Barclays and they immediately reversed the transaction pending an investigation. They then did some process of identifying the transaction in more detail. In both cases I was wrong.

I have always worked in IT, sometimes in banks, and have seen the incredible "fragility" of data processing - due to many reasons - and am amazed at how few errors actually occur. The chain of linkages in any transaction can be so convoluted it can take a lot of effort to verify and correct an error.

Good luck. Can you post how the issue gets resolved?

Clive

[Lynn]

This is a bit worrying as I just got a new card which is chip and pin, haven't used it yet.

I dreamt last night that I set my handbag down to talk to a colleague - when I went back my purse was out of my bag and the credit cards and cash cards were gone. What was really weird was that after panicking, I told myself, 'its OK, this is a dream, so I just go back and redo this bit but take the bag with me this time'. Weird! But is this a sign that I am anxious about the security of my money (and a reminder to make sure I have the tel nos to cancel cards if they do get taken)?

[DavidY]

Some places are still not Chip & PIN enabled - my local petrol station for instance - so I still sign for things even though my card is a Chip & Pin card.

So maybe these transactions were signed for (presumably with a signature that doesn't match yours) rather than PIN'd for?

I'd talk to the card company.

[Jive Brummie]

What's the benefit of chip and pin?

Surely it's easier to forge than having to sign a tricky signature?

J.

[ducasi]

What's the benefit of chip and pin?

Surely it's easier to forge than having to sign a tricky signature? The benefit is that without the chip – i.e. the card, you cannot "forge" a chip and pin transaction, as both bits are needed to authorise the transaction.

As you are the only person, theoretically, to know the pin, and it's currently not possible to clone the chip onto a blank card, it makes fraud very difficult.

With card and signature it's very easy to copy both, and so fraudulent transactions can happen without you being there.

In Diana's case, if there's fraud, it will probably be the result of a forged signature, and if I were her I'd be onto the bank or card company contesting the transactions a.s.a.p. :nice:

[Clive Long]

A bit off-topic

The following is probably excessive and probably ineffective ...

I shred all credit card receipts, financial statements, even address labels and envelopes before I bin them

If I get credit or debit card receipts where the full card number is printed (take a look at a few of your receipts) I contact the company to ask them why they don't "asterisk" out most of the card numbers on the printed receipt copy. They normally blame the bank - and I ask them when they are going to contact the bank or card company to do something about it. More companies ask for the 3 digit code on the reverse of the card when confirming a transaction but not all.

The above paranoia is fuelled by the event a couple of years ago when I was contacted by the police. Some drug-dealer type had a black book which contained banking details: account numbers and some passwords, of about 200 people - and mine was one of them. I didn't lose any money but what a job to change all my account numbers, standing orders etc. So I now try to control the flow of financial info about me into the outside world. Whether what I do has any risk-reduction effect - I don't know - but it makes me feel a little better.

Clive

[David Bailey]

What's the benefit of chip and pin?

Surely it's easier to forge than having to sign a tricky signature?

J.
There's no benefit to you - zero, zip, nada. In fact, you could argue, from your point of view, it's less secure, in the case of disputed transactions, as you could at least check whether the signature matched previously. Now though, you have to prove that you weren't there - which is, well, tricky...

The benefit is to the banks - they have an automatic record that "someone entered a PIN at this date", so have less hassle tracking down problems, and can put more of the onus on the storeholder to carry the liability. So they lose less money in fraud - or more correctly, they offload those losses to the cardholders and the merchants. So that's OK then.

"Never assume these things are done for your convenience", is a good rule-of-thumb.

[Bombay Sapphire]

There would be two transactions put through one for aound £31, another the same day for £45. Knowing that my car only takes £35 of diesel I was and still am confused.

Unfortunatley I didn't keep transaction slips!


DIANA

I Used to run a petrol station, and if you challenge the transaction with your credit card company, they will ask the garage to prove the validity of the charges, this will involve the garage providing copies of the transaction slips which generated the charge.

If the garage cannot do this, or the slips are incorrectly signed, then you will
be refunded, however if the slips are valid, and you have merely forgotten about the transaction, then you will be levied a small fee,
( it used to be a fiver), to cover admin.
This charge is levied to stop people challenging transactions willy nilly.

If you are Chip & Pin only, how can you check the signature?

Trading standards would ask you to go through this procedure first,
and only once you have established an illegal transaction will any further steps be taken.

Hope this helps & Good luck

[DianaS]

Some progress has been made. :clap:
I spoke to the bank and after initially not disclosing the time and date of the origional transactions, when I made it clear that I thought the transactions may be fraudualant, the details were provided.

Two transactions totalling around £60 in one day were seperated by 3 hours. This I can't account for at the moment and will request a copy of what was purchased as my car doesn't take more that £35 worth or diesel.

The second two transactions although they have been billed to my account on the same day, relate to transactions that were actually done completed days earlier and seperated by three whole days. When you do an online transaction is doesn't debit the money from your account when you sign, as it does when you withdraw from a cashpoint machine.

The periods that the diesel relates to on this transaction was when I was on holiday so it is much more likely that the transactions are authentic and valid.

Hmmm good, just means that I hmay have been having more of a life than I thought!!