I wish there was a way to cull these oxygen thieves.
This one gets me all the time.
So the scammers steal your credit card details. How do they get the money? Purchases? So you call the credit card company and tell them you have been scammed. If enough people call then some sort of pattern emerges and these scammers would be caught and prosecuted or better still put out of their misery. No?
We are way too kind on criminals. Society needs to toughen up. Screw up and you forfeit your rights to co-exist with the rest of humanity.
WRONG
That is what you would expect in a logical world not a "it's not my responsibility" world.
A few years back I had an unsolicited upgrade to platinum cc with the renewal fee not changing from gold. So rang to find out if could renew with points at the gold rate.
'No, the system does not allow that". {
This was just before they increased the points renewal rate for gold by 94% to make it no longer worthwhile doing}.
So I said we do not want platinum,please cancel the cards (new numbers) and ensure the numbers are no longer operable. As usual I wrote down, date, time, name, duration of call in the 'keep' file - you never know. I never used the card, neither did my wife however one DD did get swept onto the card before they were supposedly cancelled.
Fast forward 20 months. I am away (no mobile thank you!) and get a message from reception to call wife asap. The previous day was the regular 'pay-in-full' cc dd date, and as our other card offered incentives at that time - we had not used the degraded cc.
Make call, "Have you made any large purchases?" (Ironman Triathlon race expos can be dangerous), but answer was no. It seemed our credit limit on card paid off previous night had zero left. The credit limit had been made 'big' so we could pay for much of house renovation using it, big. Never offered any increases since renovation and not unexpectedly as limit is 'big'.
So my wife rang issuer immediately after talking to me and was read a list of 27 (maybe 29) transactions, all internet and all in 8 hours - she confirmed not one was ours - please cancel them.
"You have to fill in a form for each disputed transaction." But this is a fraud! "You have to fill in a form for each transaction, we'll fax them to you." Over 100 pages later, rapidly filled out, signed, witnessed (JP at work) she faxed them back.
Initially told all transactions were on her 'gold' cc, but forms faxed had a number that was not her gold cc. Was in fact her never used (& supposedly cancelled and deleted etc) Platinum a/c number. So she asked what's going on?
Long story short - I came across an article about a US cc clearer getting hacked and losing 80 million account details (in that vicinity of a/cs) covering countries including Aust.
Now, we picked up this fraud on day 1, by 10am issuer had received the signed forms.
THEY NEVER CONTACTED NOR ALERTED, IN ANY WAY, THE COMPANIES WHO WERE THE COUNTER PARTIES.
Subsequently we were contacted by a number of the companies (including a family bespoke tool maker from WA who had got an order for custom made mechanic's tools that were finally shipped 20 days later) and the story was the same - never contacted, first they knew was when the transaction was refused on their monthly merchant statement.
I then contacted a few of the other companies, as I could not believe this, and got the same story.
The way the fraud was done was most purchases (some FX online transfers done as well) were shipped to an address in Mascot that turned out to be a well-known international courier company. International courier company had accepted a prepaid order to ship a number of listed articles to the Ukraine that were to be delivered post person's (supposed) urgent departure to Ukraine due to family illness.
I then went back to cc issuer (btw - it took them 5 weeks before we got any credit limit on that account despite reporting it to police and providing a ref number to cc issuer) and asked given all the advertising about how vigilant the banks etc were on cc fraud - why had they done nothing about it?
Standard industry policy - at end of billing cycle (so as fraud done on day 1 they notified Visa 54 days later and Visa then notified the various companies defrauded on their next merchant statement). Not one company had shipped their respective order before 4pm on the day the cc issuer knew of it. The online FX had already been transferred though (was less than $2,000 in total).
The cc issuer lost nothing - the companies that could have stopped the transactions if notified lost instead.
The WA family (company) said it was the equivalent to 7 weeks profits! They tried the financial ombudsman - no luck. Told they would have to sue Visa as cc issuer followed Visa Policy.
So in reality, the CC companies are happy for any transaction to occur - even if it is fraudulent because they do not lose anything - the merchant does. It is not in the cc companies interests to cancel a single transaction as they lose their fee.
How's that for a truly messed up world.
NOTE: In the US, EU and UK it does not work this way! As they say, 'Only in Australia....'
Otherwise you can get a pin a few hours before or the day before you are going to use the card after 01 August.
