A friend’s girlfriend works for a UK bank (paying PPI claims 
) and the majority of their low value fraud is from credit cards. It’s mostly ‘friendly fraud’ e.g. customers pretending they’ve not received an item and getting a refund (from the credit card, not the merchant), ‘victimless’ because the bank picks up the bill. I don’t remember the threshold at which they investigate but it’s very high: some people pay their utility bills etc so the bank obviously knows where they live, but it isn’t worth their while investigating. For contrast, the lowest amount I’ve taken a debtor to court for was ~£40: it’s the principle.
This summer I paid approx 1700 HRK in Plodine supermarket by contactless which I found worrying if the card were stolen – the limit is £30 in the UK.
A few years ago I had a real row with Oxford who charged parking when I wasn’t actually there, but unfortunately paid by debit card so couldn’t do anything about it afterwards.
As there are two separate contracts, merchant-CC and CC-customer, the consumer protection for credit cards is very good, but it does involve a certain amount of hassle to resolve.
Capitaine wrote:
but unfortunately paid by debit card so couldn’t do anything about it afterwards
Did you actually ask your bank?
A friend of mine got >100k stolen from her account via debit card, the bank paid up everything, without having to go through lawyers.
My understanding is that without the PIN or 3D secure etc, any transaction is reversible, on any type of card.
I’ve certainly had payments reversed on a debit card.
Noe wrote:
Did you actually ask your bank?
I didn’t… probably why I’m still annoyed about it :smile
It was part of a bigger bill comprising fuel, two landings, and some parking when I actually was there: maybe £15 out of £300 total
Noe wrote:
PIN or 3D secure etc, any transaction is reversible, on any type of card
This is worth knowing, and I guess is what makes contactless etc easy
On a side story, I got a friend who was invited to assist to his credit card fraudester trial 1 year after (he got his money back on the spot), the thief used to cash in payments in a fancy restaurant and decided to keep some numbers to himself !
Yes for credit cards, you can reverse some transactions even when you have done it yourself with a PIN (it is just how much time you want to spend chasing your bank to reverse it, I got half of deposit taken on CC and then got back, it was for a rental car damage where nothing was reported in my return contract, I insisted with the bank it was a fraud which turns out to be an error), less sure about debit cards…
I once had £400 taken from a credit card that I’d only ever used once over the previous quarter, in a hotel that had also taken a copy of my passport, with a receptionist from the same country where I didn’t buy a lot of electrical goods.
It baffled me that nobody ever called me to ask about it, as the culprit seemed pretty obvious to me.
The whole “passport copy” business (common in hotels; nowadays they take a smartphone pic of it) is hugely dodgy. There is a guy here (I am sure he won’t identify himself) who lost 7k, by sending someone a scan of his passport and his bank details. His account got cleaned out. There are easy scams you can do with just a passport scan; you can certainly draw cash by walking into a bank branch. It’s a bit of a miracle this doesn’t happen more (I got this 2x, with a fake driving license).
62N handling in Vagar stole $700 from my credit card. I’d never pre-authorise anything with a handling agent after that.
The fraudsters are running amok in the UK at the moment. Works like a guy calls you up to book a service!purchase. He wants to pay by credit card.
You take the card detail say for 500.00. It goes through. Problem it is a stolen ID/card. Money arrives in your account. Service carried out by you/goods sent. Four days later the money is locked by your provider. Detail and card have been stolen. Your provider returns the money to the poor individual whose detail and card have been high jacked You are now liable. Fraudster disappears with service/goods leaving you to take the hit. Call the police. Not interested. There is no current criminal and legal law to deal with on line fraudulent credit card theft. If you are lucky you pass the information to a National Fraud Team (call centre in Norfolk) who will take detail but are powerless to investigate. They gather statistical information for the UK govt. Police will not action any of it, even if you have all the fraudsters detail.
I now use a small credit card with 250.00 limit and about 10.00 free funds at any time to book hotels/airports etc. pay when I arrive and where I can see the whites of their eyes.
Yes, the onus ends up falling on the retailer (which is an incentive for them to not overlook transactions, and enforce extra security measures).
One of my multiple “online bank” cards is kept frozen unless I need to do payments. I can also set a monthly limit on the fly (and readjust) and freeze / unfreeze as I want.
Fintech is making all this more secure. Even the 3D secure verification is now done in-app
