My uncle who is on holidays to the UK just called this morning. He is very upset, he arrived two weeks ago and used his credit card to top up his Virgin mobile phone. He has just found out that since this transaction, his credit card had been fraudulently used - over £700 has so far been taken from his account. The irony is that whoever the fraudster (possibly a staff) is, (s)he is using it on another Virgin service. My uncle apparently suspected this transaction last week and alerted his bank - HSBC, they cancelled and reissued him with a new card, but this morning he noticed that as at Friday 30 March 2007, money was still being taken from his account.
He went to the police in Hornsey N7 to report the fraud and was told by a police officer that they are no longer required to take details of stolen cards. Supposedly, the banks are now entrusted to handle these matters themselves. Considering that banks never wanted the general public to know about failures in their system, I wonder how this will reflect in the national crime data? If my experience serves me well, the theft of my Halifax bank cheque book in 2005 and the unauthorised withdrawals from my account - Halifax became very hostile when I questioned the withdrawal and more so when Iwent to the police to report the offence. MyChristmas of 2005 became a nightmare as I was not allowed to withdraw money from my account, some of their staff in one of their call centers told me to stop whingeing as some people have had more money stolen. They even charged me for some of the withdrawal and only when I threatened to go to the media and possibly to the court did they relent.
No comments:
Post a Comment