Banks and Their Fraud Protection Systems

Banks are like marmite; you either love them or hate them. Personally I find that I hate them more and more these days. Just today I found that they had raised issue with a single transaction for £11.95, but allowed a transaction of £130 to go through with no problems at all.

My bank is one of the big high street banks, who say that I’m not credit worthy, and yet are insistent that they protect my money better than any of the other big players on the market at the moment. Unfortunately after today’s incident, I’m not so sure that this is the case. I’ve had trouble washing up and cleaning generally for the past few months, and it all compounded when I found myself strapped back into a wheelchair for the foreseeable future. So in order to help myself out of the situation, I decided to purchase two items for my kitchen; a tabletop dishwasher and a portable washing machine. I headed over to Amazon.co.uk to order my portable washing machine, knowing that I could pick a fairly cheap one for around £50. Placed the order, and everything was fine.

So my thoughts turned to the inevitable tabletop dishwasher, which I had been promising myself for some months now anyway. I found one at £130 including delivery. I jumped on it, and tried to order…again…and again. Phoned the bank and was told that they had suspicions someone had tried to use my card…2 DAYS PREVIOUSLY! Obviously I because quite concerned at this, and after waiting patiently on hold for several minutes, someone from middle Asia area proceeded to list several transactions which had been attempted over the past few days, and failed as they had been picked up as forgeries. Not that anyone at the bank had thought to contact me and ask.

As it turns out several of the transactions were fraudulent, and therefore the bank ultimately did their jobs correctly, but after being informed that it is the policy of my bank not to contact you, but to place a stop on the card and wait for you to get in touch with them, has made me think about moving banks once again.

The only thing I can suggest is constant vigilance. If you use your debit/credit card online then try and use a card that you keep separate for your transactions, and only transfer the money that you need into the account. By doing this, you are giving yourself more chance of beating the fraudsters, and helping the bank to keep your money safe.