Chip & pin

It's the banks choice whether to issue you with any sort of card or not

- you're not entitled to one by law. But at such a blatant lie you should have invoked their complaints procedure. You might even have merited some compo.

Adrian

I don't know whether it's the situation here, but with some cards you have to 'activate' them by putting them in a terminal and entering the PIN.

Me too.

Adrian

Of course I did. The answer was some variant of "Fuck off". And there is

*nothing* you can do about it.

Of course I did. The response was a variant of "Fuck off, we can do what we like". And they were right. They could do what they liked, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Ha ha.

Well, given your paranoia you'll just have to do without then, won't you.

Because banks have form for claiming the above when they haven't even bothered to check if it is the case

tim

I don't think that's true. Once you've invoked their complaints procedure, they have to take you seriously.

Recently I was given the runaround by a high street bank. As soon as I uttered the magic words "I wish to make a complaint", they suddenly started taking me seriously and came up with an acceptable circumvention to the problem of their making.

I've seen press reports of £25 for 'inconvenience' for the most trivial of complaints.

Adrian

From 1994:

('Simple examples', point 3) Theo

Crikey! From 1994 and yet sometimes when I am driving I forget where I am going and even worse I often do not remember actually where I am and I have to ask my wife if we have crossed the Orwell Bridge.

pete

But it is the responsibility of the bank to prove that you were neglient, not your responsibility to prove that you weren't. I had a colleage whose card was somehow cloned and used miles away from where he was. Even though he could prove he was nowhere near the ATMs the bank would not accept it.

But it's a lot of hassle. Have you ever used the FO? It takes ages and, in the case I took, I could have handled it easier and quicker myself.

I've not convinced. I have personal experience of several companies damaging "customer relations" for amounts far smaller than a few hundred pounds. BT have lost my business for ever over £10. Orange also for a similar amount. I can name several others too.

Having said that, when my credit card account was used fraudulently recently, I was not asked to prove my innocence. Although the matter was handled really badly by the bank and took over 6 months to sort out, I was not accused of fraud myself.

I've not received compensation for 'trivial' complaints. I did get £10 from First Direct for totally cocking up the transfer of my direct debits but all that covered was the cost of the phonecalls to them to sort out the mess that they made.

I did receive more compo (~£50) from the Co-Op bank for a series of errors, incompetences, and other problems that went on for about 9 months.

No. I can't do that either. Modern society requires that I have a bank account, otherwise I would not be able to buy essential services or receive payment for my work. That's the problem.

Please cite a few cases.

There was one on "rip off Britain" last week (no I think it's been two weeks since it was on?)

tim

And guess what - *ankers want to make you pay for the privilege :(

Adrian

It was suggested a while back that upon receiving a card, you should scratch the CVV number off it (after memorizing it). It's not needed for C

+P usage, and removing it means anyone handling your card can't clone it for cardholder not present transactions.

On Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:52:41 GMT, Jethro_uk wrote as underneath :

Interesting - I hadnt heard of that trick - is the CW no. used for anything else that might make you regret altering the card? Assuming of course you dont forget the no.. C+

No, it's *only* use is for CNP transactions. Really, you should never need to hand your card to anyone anyway. I can't recall where I read it now, but there was a warning a while back that you should be especially wary of situations where you are required to hand your card to someone for a C+P transaction - a lot of card fraud originates in cards that are swiped to be cloned for use in non C+P countries. The scam goes something like you hand your card over, and it gets surreptitiously swiped before going into the C+P reader.

Never ever let your card out of your sight. Restaurants are probably the riskiest places, as it's trivial to engineer a situation where you have handed over your card, and the waiter has to "go and get the machine".

An exception to that is when using your card in overseas countries where the locally issued cards don't use C+P.

Establishments are not geared up with mobile terminals of the type that exist in the UK, and you just hand over your card to the waiter as you used to do in the UK prior to C+P. Several times I've been asked to go to some back office where the cashier is located because their authorisation terminal has requested a PIN to be entered.

Chris