Credit card companies "assisting" fraudsters. Can I do anything more?

.............. hope this link is "better":

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The main thing I can think of is keep hassling your credit card company. If there has been fraud on your account they should issue you with a new card with a new account number. This should make it more difficult for the fraud to continue.

I'd also threaten to close your credit card account - this /might/ motivate them to speed things up. However many companies do not care about customer churn so will take no action to keep your business.

I don't know whether it is worth calling the Police. They're supposed to be interested in stopping crime.

It might be worth posting a question on uk.legal.moderated.

You could also try contacting your MP in view to changing the law.

I had trouble stopping a CPA a few years back - it took about a year :-(

I would say that as your CC Co has made a charge to your account, and is working on a continuing authority basis, THEY (not the fraudsters) need to provide you with the authorisation. Failure to provide that should immediately put a hold on any further charges to your account pending their enquiries.

You may also want to consider at the same time making a complaint to the credit card company, maybe progressing it to the Financial Ombudsman Services

You may also want to consider reporting it to the police.

A combination of all three may well get it all resolved.

IANAL Iain

Is that a joke? The police are useless.

Don't worry about it. It's the bank's problem - you've notified them of the fraudulent transaction so they should the amount into dispute, stop any interest/charges on that amount, and unless they get proof from the retailer that you authorised the transaction they'll refund it. May take a while (was about 3 months when it happened to me but can be quicker). It could be the fraudsters are using random credit card numbers so the bank may not consider it worthwhile changing your card.

It's pointless reporting it to the police as for a start the OP can't be sure it *is* fraud (it could simply be a mistake), and secondly if it is fraud, it's the retailer or the bank that's the victim so it's up to them to report it.

OK, that's possible. But if so, it should be straightforward to sort out.

This is not necessarily true. If the bank are being so obtuse and unhelpful as to make the OP suggest they are actually "assisting" the fraudster, then if the cardholder cannot get the charges reversed,

*he* is the victim. Moreover, it's not just the fraudster who would benefit, but the bank and card company too, from the transaction fees involved. Thus if there is fraud, and the bank and card company are facilitating it by being less than enthusiastically helpful to the cardholder, they would automatically become accomplices.

Not necessarily. Depends on where the mistake was made.

Yes, but until that happens, ie until the bank says "it was a genuine transaction, the charge stands", the OP is not a victim of fraud.

If the bank refuse to refund the charges despite knowing that the transaction wasn't genuine, then the bank themselves are the fraudsters!

Can you expand on this?

Wrong. If there is fraud, then the customer is a victim of it from the outset. It may be that as a result of taking some action (i.e. disputing the transaction) perhaps followed by some further action (resisting attempts to be fobbed off), the customer manages to get the charges reversed, but that just makes him less of a victim, not no victim. He's still had the hassle. Some people can get really stressed by this, so much so that it can harm their health and in extreme cases trigger a fatal heart attack. He might get the charge refunded in the end, but it'd be a bit of a pyrrhic victory if it costs him his life.

Also, the matter of fact (of whether the transaction was genuine) is not for the bank to judge. It is not impossible to imagine the bank somehow becoming convinced (by the frauster's smoke and mirror tactics) to declare the transaction genuine when in fact it wasn't.

That's more or less what I said, but I'd put it stronger than you:

There is a big difference between "knowing that it wasn't" and "not knowing that it was", but nevertheless I suggest the bank, if they refuse to refund, should be considered complicit not only in the former case (as you said) but in the latter as well!

The OP is a victim of fraud the instant the money is taken from their account.

It could be any number of things, some of which will be easier to sort out than others. It could be retailer typing in the number wrong and happening to get a genuine other card, or an obscure bug in the bank's computer.

Not a direct victim. OK, an indirect victim, but you may as well argue everyone is an indirect victim of fraud as the costs of dealing with fraud increase the transaction costs which we all pay.

If anyone really gets that wound up by this sort of thing I'd suggest they cancel all their credit and debit cards immediately.

Of course it's for the bank to judge, initially at least. Obviously if the customer doesn't agree with the judgement they can turn to higher authorities like the financial ombudsman or the courts.

In the latter case the amount should be held "in dispute" until the issue is settled. Because it *is* in dispute, a retailer has said it's genuine and the customer has said not.

Well, both those should be straightforward to sort out. I wanted you to expand on mistakes which would not be.

Another kind of mistake (and one which I'd guess would happen fairly often) is where the transaction is indeed genuine but the customer has forgotten about it, and the trader's name as it appears on the card statement fails to jog his memory because it bears no relation to that of the actual trader involved. Sadly this kind of proxying seems to be quite prevalent these days. It ought to be disallowed.

You're looking at the problem with too money-focused a view. A person is a victim of a crime as soon as he suffers any injury or loss, even if it is not loss of money. At the very least, he loses the time it takes to get it sorted. That's not indirect, it's a direct result of the fraud attempt.

Don't be absurd. You might as well suggest that people with medical conditions which would render them more likely to get a heart attack if they should find themselves at the receiving end of a simple weaponless mugging than someone of a more robust constitution should stay off the streets and lock themselves in their homes. Even there they're not safe from being attacked.

Well, of course the bank will make enquiries and form an initial opinion, but they are in general unable to make a determination which is sufficiently reliable for them to state with confidence that the transaction *was* genuine. The best they can say is that they *think* it was, and to tell the customer why they think so, such as by forwarding to him any supporting evidence which has been provided by the merchant.

It should go without saying that in the absence of such evidence the bank would not claim a transaction was genuine, but one does seem to hear too many anecdotes of customers running up against a brick wall with their bank.

Indeed it should. I'm just saying that if a bank fails to keep the transaction suspended when the retailer's evidence is scant, and tries to move the transaction to "settled" status without the customer's consent (and anecdotes do tend to pop up from time to time of banks giving customers a hard time in this respect), then they do become accomplices to the fraud.

The customer is clearly a direct victim.

Everyone else is an indirect victim.

Why do you think some obscure bug would be easy to sort out? If a particular chip is read as the wrong card number for instance? All evidence would indicate the transaction was made with the customer's card and verified by PIN.

No it's not, it's indirect. Just like, say, if I owe you 100 but I can't pay you cos someone's nicked my money. I'm the direct victim, you're the indirect victim. You not getting your 100 could cause you all sorts of hassle. Or if you wanted to go shopping but couldn't cos some arsonist has burnt the shop down. Etc...

Having a fraudulent transaction on your credit card is one of life's minor irritations. If someone really does get wound up enough about it to cause them a heart attack then they are likely to get one anyway, minor irritations are a fact of life.

IME it's more like a paper wall on which they don't push...the first instinct of any "complaints" type department is to fob you off...

More like they chose to back the wrong horse.

Tell you what, go to the police and ask for a crime number. See what they say.

I don't. I think the effect of the bug should be easy to sort out. No evidence available from merchant to show I authorised a transaction.

Get real.

*All* the evidence? I think not.

Agreed, but I wasn't talking about some other person, I'm talking about the same person. The cardholder whose account is fraudulently charged is directly affected, because he suffers grief. This grief can take one form or another, i.e. he can suffer either loss of money or loss of time and cool in trying to avoid the loss of money. Either way he's a direct victim.

The trouble is that a minor irritation can easily turn into a major one when attempts to sort them out turn into serious challenges, especially when your bank and card company act as though you were the criminal. It's easy to become paranoid when the whole world really is out to get you. :-)

If that were the case, nobody could ever report a murder to the police. Nowhere does it say that only the victim can report an offence to the police.

They'll go to their trusty manual "How to reduce the crime statistics and do as little work as possible" and then say that no crime has been committed and it's a civil matter.

When children see many teachers as lazy and incompetent and living off the backs of taxpayer's work it's easy to understand why Britain is full of lazy good for nothing claiming benefits, trying to hinder you, wanting to change your phone service provider and phoning you lying about your placing on search engines and some such in an attempt to get money for nothing.