Further to a previous discussion, which I completely lost due to my computer frying up, I have someone repeatedly making credit card payments in my shop using someone else's cards. I've had three inside a week now - the payments are authorised by the card issuing bank, the name, address, security code all match, which means that the fraudster has obtained these details somehow. (my friends are all reporting a lot of phishing phone calls which could explain that, or they have managed to get the cardholder's address details some other way - intercepting cards in the post perhaps? I don't know) The only clue that they do not belong to the cardholder is that the shipping address is different, and they are high risk private addresses - this is information that someone taking a payment over a telephone or in a shop won't see. So, I tell the police - not interested. I tell my merchant bank - not interested. My merchant bank advises that I should not attempt to contact the person whose card is being used, something to do with the data protection act. Legally, can I write to them? Should I? I know that if my card details had been obtained and were being used like this I would want to know. I do not want to alarm anyone, but surely it is better that they know and can cancel the cards than this carry on and they have the stress of trying to get payments reversed? If I can write to them, what information should I include? Is there anyone else I can tell? Thank you.
NB the payments made are 'deferred' which means that no money has been taken and I am able to simply void them.