Someone has spent £4000 on my debit card...

[El Barto]

Ok I'm just going to save you the bother and say that yes, I am a complete silly person. But that doesn't really help me right now.

This forum is full of clever and generous people and I'm hoping for a bit of help or advice or anything really... please read carefully!

I received a text today saying a direct debit payment had been missed, so I went into my account and indeed I did not have the funds to pay it. This is because £137 had been spent on my card a few days ago, but not by me.

Full disclosure: I do not regularly monitor this account; it has been overdrawn for years and I have struggled to get it back in the black, so instead I've generally ignored it except when I'm paying bills.

Anyway, I did start to look more closely at it and very quickly realised that someone has been using my card to spend lots of money. These transactions ALL appear as Amazon orders, though at this point I am unsure whether they are legitimate Amazon transactions or just disguised as them.

No mystery orders have been placed on my Amazon account.

I spent most of today checking my Amazon account against card statements to find out which orders I'd made and which I hadn't. It appears this began in August 2018 and to date around £4000.00 has been spent, usually a handful of orders a month.

I called the bank (Lloyds) who told me that because they can see that the billing and delivery address are the same as the address they have for me, that this doesn't count as fraud. To which I said, I think it does because I have not made these transactions. They told me to contact Amazon.

I did contact Amazon, who said that their fraud department only communicates via email and I will have to wait for them to get in touch with me.

So I'm now not sure what to do. Wait to be contacted by Amazon so I can determine whether these order were made with them? This, I think, is the best course of action at the moment. But it's so much money and I work pretty hard so it kinda sucks.

I know I should have been more vigilant but to be honest it becomes a bit of a pain checking statements all the time when you use your card for everything and Amazon is the world's go to shopping centre. If I see £10 spent at Amazon on my account I think "yeah I probably bought a book a few days ago". At least, that's what I used to think.

So, any hope of getting any of my money back?

 

[Dibs-h]

Anyway, I did start to look more closely at it and very quickly realised that someone has been using my card to spend lots of money. These transactions ALL appear as Amazon orders, though at this point I am unsure whether they are legitimate Amazon transactions or just disguised as them.

No mystery orders have been placed on my Amazon account.

I spent most of today checking my Amazon account against card statements to find out which orders I'd made and which I hadn't. It appears this began in August 2018 and to date around £4000.00 has been spent, usually a handful of orders a month.

Can you confirm -

1. Your own Amazon account shows a total of purchases (genuine) which is modest\small?
2. Your own Amazon account shows no purchases that you did not actually make?
3. Your bank statements show 4k or thereabouts show as purchases on Amazon, above the modest amount that you spent on your own genuine purchases?

I'm expecting

1. Yes
2. It does not show any "non-me" purchases?
3. Yes.

 

[El Barto]

No you are reading it completely incorrectly.

These orders do not appear on my Amazon account, only my bank statements. And I have not made them.

 

[Dibs-h]

No you are reading it completely incorrectly.

These orders do not appear on my Amazon account, only my bank statements. And I have not made them.

Sorry - I was rewriting my post when you probably posted this.

 

[El Barto]

No worries. You are correct with your edited post!

 

[Dibs-h]

These orders do not appear on my Amazon account, only my bank statements. And I have not made them.

I'll take that as the following:

1. Yes my Amazon account only shows my genuine purchases/
2. It does not show any "non-me" purchases?
3. Yes only my bank statements show these other Amazon (not from my Amazon account) purchases.

Check your Amazon order history to make sure there are no archived orders. Google suggest you can't delete old orders but you can archive them, in which case it might not be obvious they are there. That would help you work out whether your Amazon account got hacked and the card on the account then gone used.

Or if they didn't compromise your Amazon account but did get your card details and used that on a different Amazon account.

 

[El Barto]

Good shout on archived orders. I did check but nothing there...

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Do you still have access to your email account and your amazon accounts?

If so - I assume you have changed the passwords. Have the delivery and billing addresses been altered in anyway or have seetings been made to ditch all amazon emails into the spam / junk mail folder?

I don't want to deliver bad news - but it does sound like a very similar scam to this one:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bea ... d-off.html

 

[Dibs-h]

Assuming Google is correct and completed orders on an Amazon account can't be deleted (just archived) and you check your Amazon account thoroughly and no "dodgy" orders exist elsewhere - this info could be supplied to the bank to show that just because you have an Amazon account (with the your address for billing\delivery) doesn't mean anything as your own order history shows it wasn't your account doing the purchases, i.e. someone created a different account and used you card details to "power" it. In the end the bank would have to refund.

Although this may depend on if they have T&C's for "must be reported within x days" type of thing. Or "within reasonable time". They'd argue you took too long - but it costs you nothing to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman and they are more reasonable.

If the "dodgy" orders are archived in your Amazon account - then it gets complicated.

To my mind - Amazon billing you as Amazon Sarl (or whatever it is for Luxembourg or whatever) as opposed to Amazon UK might complicate matters irrespective of whether your Amazon account could hacked or just your card details got used on another account). The bank will try to palm you off onto them and Amazon will ignore you.

Assuming your debit card is Visa - forcing the bank to get Visa involved (or mentioning the Visa protection in your complaint to the bank) usually has some effect.

 

[fezman]

ahh El Barto - sorry to see you having these troubles.

On the flip side, someone just deposited a £1000 into my current account - for which I have no expectation or knowledge.

I'm now going through a load of hassle to return this to the person. I know if i had made a £1k mistake i would be grateful for the recipient to make sure i got the money back - so will endeavour to do so.

Good luck with getting your money back EB

F

 

[El Barto]

Thanks for the replies guys. There’s no evidence whatsoever that my Amazon account was hacked. I usually keep an eye on spam folders because work emails often go in there and I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

If I had to guess I’d say my card was cloned or something similar, but if that’s the case then it seems unusual they’d only make purchases on amazon...

 

[lurker]

Your bank should help you.
Initially you need to get a block put on ASAP

 

[Dibs-h]

The article does say

"Paul then searched his inbox and spotted that the order details had been archived into another folder, suggesting the fraudsters had also compromised his email. After logging in to his Amazon account, Paul, who lives in Kent, then discovered another order, for £404 gaming headphones, delivered to a newsagents in London."

which synchs with Google saying completed orders can't be deleted, merely archived. So if you aren't finding them in your own Amazon account - it would strongly suggest someone has created another account using your card details.

Unfortunately the article also says:

"If you paid by credit card for goods between £100 and £30,000, you can make a claim under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. There is a limited timeframe to make chargeback claims, so be sure to make them within 120 days of the payments being made."

but depending on how the bank behave and what the FO says if you go down that route - that 120 days might be strictly applied or not.

 

[Dibs-h]

Your bank should help you.
Initially you need to get a block put on ASAP

I agree - get onto the bank now and get a stop\block put on the card. I'd be very tempted to get ALL your cards etc replaced. Not necessarily at once - maybe stagger it, if you have a few different cards.

 

[Dibs-h]

it seems unusual they’d only make purchases on amazon...

Not many other places where you can buy high value items with a single button click and have them delivered somewhere which isn't the cardholder's address.

 

[thetyreman]

physically go into the bank and tell them what has happened, forget phoning them.

I would go in as soon as physically possible, tomorrow morning the second they open, they should be able to instantly block them from spending more money, ideally you want to speak to a bank manager, £4000 is a huge amount of money, the sooner you sort it the better, hope you get it sorted!

 

[Dibs-h]

physically go into the bank and tell them what has happened, forget phoning them.

I would go in as soon as physically possible, tomorrow morning the second they open, they should be able to instantly block them from spending more money, ideally you want to speak to a bank manager, £4000 is a huge amount of money, the sooner you sort it the better, hope you get it sorted!

If you want to go - that's fine but you don't need to go. ALL calls are recorded and supplied in CD format if\when requested. Just make a note of the person's name and date/time. Ask them to send you a confirm by email.

I think most banks have 24hr banking - so you can ring now and report the fraudulent use of a card and\or it's details. That gets the "case" logged and makes maximum use of your 120 days, should that become a sticking point. Also stops\blocks the card now.

 

[El Barto]

The card has been cancelled so that’s good. I have already been on the phone to Lloyd’s twice today, both times advised to speak to Amazon. SO I’m going to try and do that and then at least I have something to bring back to LLoyd’s...

 

[rafezetter]

Do you still have access to your email account and your amazon accounts?

If so - I assume you have changed the passwords. Have the delivery and billing addresses been altered in anyway or have seetings been made to ditch all amazon emails into the spam / junk mail folder?

I don't want to deliver bad news - but it does sound like a very similar scam to this one:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bea ... d-off.html

wow sobering stuff.

 

[Dibs-h]

The card has been cancelled so that’s good. I have already been on the phone to Lloyd’s twice today, both times advised to speak to Amazon. SO I’m going to try and do that and then at least I have something to bring back to LLoyd’s...

I'd tell Lloyds to jeff off and them that "I'm doing a section 75 chargeback and reporting fraudulent activity on the card. Who the retailer is that is involved, is none of my concern and if Lloyds wish to pursue the matter with the retailer, that's their concern. Yes - I have an Amazon account and that has not been hacked and will happily supply the order history to confirm it isn't from that account. If you wish to ignore my request for a section 75 chargeback, then once the appropriate time limit for your own internal complaints department to deal with the matter - which let's face it are on the same script - has passed, I will be filing a complaint for redress with the Financial Ombudsman service."

Things might move quicker at that point.