Bar stewards!

[denny]

Got my bank statement for the last month today... I fairly quickly spotted why I went over my overdraft limit so unexpectedly fast:

Fri 29th Sep:
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 4.99 USD on 25th Sep - £2.71
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 50.00 USD on 25th Sep - £27.22
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 25.00 USD on 25th Sep - £13.60

Wed 4th Oct:
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 1.00 USD on 25th Sep - £0.54
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 50.00 USD on 25th Sep - £27.26

Mon 9th Oct:
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 48.78 USD on 25th Sep - £26.80
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 41.56 USD on 25th Sep - £22.83
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 57.87 USD on 25th Sep - £31.79
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 43.75 USD on 25th Sep - £24.03
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 14.38 USD on 25th Sep - £7.90

Wed 11th Oct:
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 50.00 USD on 25th Sep - £27.56

Fri 13th Oct:
Payment to WCBILLING.COM 43.37 USD on 25th Sep - £24.04

Mon 16th Oct:
Credit from WCBILLING.COM 1.00 USD on 25th Sep - £0.53
Credit from WCBILLING.COM 4.99 USD on 25th Sep - £2.62

So I guess my card got cloned or whatever. This should be fun to sort out... anybody know got experience of doing this dance with Abbey? I just rang them and got given the number for the 'VISA contended payments' line, who are only open 9-5 Mon-Fri.

The two credits at the end are a bit odd, but I guess maybe they were 'validation' transactions that got refunded once the real money was spent. They are the last items on my statement though, so if the rest came back in the last few days I wouldn't know it yet. I don't have online banking with Abbey because their sign-up procedure is such a fiddly pain in the arse, and there's no way I'm trying to discuss this with their normal phone operators, who can barely (if you're lucky) understand enough English to conduct a normal transaction.

Anyway, assuming I get it all back, that's £236.78 which I'll be wanting back, plus whatever charges they've screwed me for while it was missing and for "using your card outside the UK". So my money isn't as fucked up as I thought it was this month. Hence the current mood.

Update: looking at the website in question makes me wonder if there's a phone-scam going on there too... "See an unfamiliar charge on your statement? Call us and we'll be glad to assist you with it. Call us before calling your bank because we will sort it out much faster than they would! PLEASE CALL US FIRST!". Hrm. Seems like an unlikely use of such a high value domain name though (they're the billing arm of webcams.com).

Update2: on further inspection, there appear to be other flaky debit card transactions going right back to the beginning date of the statement... time to go and find the previous statement and have a closer look at it, I guess.

Thu 21st Sep:
Payment to EUPAYCOM.NET 20.70 USD on 17th Sep - £11.30

Update3: + £20 and £10 to O2 PAYG, and £50 to Hackney Council.


I guess I should probably check physical locations of cash machine withdrawals too... any other suggestions welcomed.

Comments

[moosipher.livejournal.com]

The two credits at the end could be paypal validations ..

Aside from that - no clue . Search and destroy , my young friend !

[ulorin-vex.livejournal.com]

eek. dont know about abbey (would guess it was the same) but when my card details were pinched and used on some gambling site i got it back pretty quickly, the bank just sent me a form to sign and i had to send it back with my statements highlighting everything that wasnt mine.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Same here it seems - a lot less hassle than I was expecting!

[uberredfraggle.livejournal.com]

HAve you been buying lots of toilets but just won't admit it? :p

Hope it gets sorted asap. My dad his card cloned and it was used in Italy not long after they went to Croatia so they guessed it was done there. :/ It is annoying.

[belaroo.livejournal.com]

Just work out all the stuff you can't account for and Abbey should do the rest. If you have any disputes, we subscribe to Which? legal and could get you some advice but I recon you shouldn't have a problem seeing as if it's a chip and pin it explains why they can withdraw money abroad. There won't be many places they can from within the UK.
On the Motley Fool (www.fool.co.uk) website they have tips on how to avoid it - it might give you some clue as to when your card might have been cloned.