Not fraud is like this.

[charamei]

Note to myself for the future: in NatWest-computer-speak, 'a bookshop in Luxembourg' means Amazon.

Sorry, Fraud Prevention Guy. If the machine had been programmed by somebody with a bit more sense, you wouldn't have had to deal with me being cross at you on my lunch break.

(My account's fine. The suspicious transactions in question turned out to be:

• Moving money into my savings account like I do every month on payday


• Placing an order on Amazon, shock, horror, oh wait I do that at least twice a month


• Buying reusable period towels while being a woman in her early 20s.

Clearly suspicious behaviour.)

The best part is, because they make you call them, I have paid three quid for the privilege of being frustrated by a machine and getting to tell a complete (male) stranger about my menstrual hygiene over the phone. Now that's a con.

Comments

[lurkingcat]

That is very frustrating.

I had problems with my credit card company when they took to refusing my card every time I tried to make an online purchase with it. They stopped doing that and then a few years later completely failed to question the purchase of three plane tickets to different destinations and transaction from a clothing store based in another country all of which amounted to my total annual expenditure on that card in the space of one week. Oh yes, someone had cloned my card :( At least they sorted out it pretty quickly when I queried it.

[charamei]

Ouch :(

Someone hacked my Paypal account a few months ago, but I was very lucky - the test transaction they used was £20 of Facebook points (or whatever they're called) and I don't have a Facebook account, so it stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Incidentally, Paypal are really, really good at dealing speedily with queried transactions, and even gave me a refund.

I wonder how much they really do monitor every transaction, and how much of it is a red flag against an account that's had previous problems. I know my mum has a similar problem every Spring when she preorders all her theatre tickets for the upcoming season.

[lurkingcat]

I have this sneaking suspicion that it's all to do with how the credit card company set the automated parameters for querying suspicious activity and as soon as they tweak one thing another one breaks a little bit. Your mum might be getting caught out by something as simple as "No similar transactions in the last 180 days".

[dbskyler]

You do have to wonder what criteria the companies use. I once had my credit card company call me to say that not only had they noted suspicious activity on my account, they had gone ahead and canceled the card and were sending me a new one. It turned out that all of the charges were mine, and the card hadn't been compromised. Maybe it doesn't cost them much to issue a new card, but I was surprised that they did that without even calling first to ask if I'd been making a lot of purchases lately.

[charamei]

That may very well be the case; as far as I know, it's only ever happened to her on once-a-year charges.

[charamei]

Wow - really? That is overzealous, and for that very reason - they seem to get it wrong almost as often as they get it right.

I've never heard of it happening before. Did they say if it was company policy, or could it have been (for example) a twit pressing the wrong button?

[dbskyler]

No, my account had definitely been reviewed by a human, and someone made a deliberate decision to cancel the card. It's interesting that they were so certain that the charges were fraudulent. The customer service rep called me up and told me there were suspicious charges and they were handling it, and I was so grateful at first. Then she started telling me what the charges were and I kept saying "no, that one's mine, and so's that one, and yes, that one too," and she got a little flustered. In the end she told me to review my statement when I got it and mark down any charges that weren't mine and send them in. However, all of the charges were mine.

It was a small pain for me because I was without the card until the new one arrived, and I had to switch over one or two recurring charges to the new account number. But mostly it seemed that the credit card company had jumped the gun and spent time and effort that they could have saved themselves by calling me earlier. On the other hand, at least they called to tell me what they were doing instead of refusing the charge the next time I used the card and making me figure out what was going on.