Eek! I got cloned…
Having your credit card cloned is, sadly, an all too common experience. It hadn’t happened to me, but it has now.
The first clue that something was amiss was when my charge card account disappeared from my bank’s online banking service. Today, I was going to call the bank and give them a bollocking. Glad I didn’t.
The postwoman delivered two letters from the bank - the monthly statement for the charge card and a request that I contact the bank urgently. I don’t hang about when I get letters like that, but I did take a moment to check the statement. My eye immediately went to the last item - £153.00 paid to what appeared to be a tattoo website.
I called the bank.
The fraud department went through the statement with me. There well half a dozen items that had nothing to do with me. All except the tattooing firm were payments to companies in France, where I live. And the payment to the tattoo website was billed in euros.
My immediate thought was that my card details had been nabbed when I used the card in a shop or restaurant. I recently stayed in Paris on the way back from a conference in Spain. Could it have been the hotel?
But no. I rarely use this card in France. It’s a Mastercard issued by my UK bank and often gets refused in France. My Visa charge card, although issued by the same bank, never has such problems. Nearly all the legitimate charges on the card were with UK companies, all of them very reputable - such as Amazon.
There are two entries on the latest statement that got my attention. I made a cash withdrawal from a local bank and paid for diesel at the local supermarket’s petrol station. I used a 24hr pump using my card. Could either the bank ATM or the fuel pump have been fitted with a skimmer?
Trish had checked the tattoo website - it’s an e-commerce site selling tattooing equipment. She called them. The owners couldn’t have been more helpful and were very grateful that we had got in touch. Credit card fraud is a major problem for web-based businesses and they were keen to pursue this.
They promised to check out the order and get back to us. And they were as good as their word. Ten minutes later, they called back with the name and address used for the order. The address was in Rennes, about a hour’s drive from where we live. And there was another interesting tidbit: as a security check, the tattooing website had asked the customer to email them a photocopy of the card. They duly got the image - showing a card with the fake name but my card details.
The bank has, of course, cancelled the card. It has also reimbursed me for all the fraudulent charges.
So here’s what I’ve learned today.
Check your card statements carefully. If the bank’s fraud-seeking algorithms hadn’t been so good, I could have been seriously out of pocket, and may not have noticed.
If you find dubious activity on your card, contact the vendors. They need to know about it as much as you do and may be grateful for the information. They may also have useful data to give to you, which you can pass on to your bank.
I still have a few questions to ask and some avenues of inquiry to follow up. We’ll see where this leads…
