Monday 1 April 2013

My debit card was defrauded

This morning I got an urgent text from the bank saying:
"Your card has been compromised, for your security we have disabled your account. Please call the ______ Bank urgently on _______."
Oh great I thought, and rang them. The message didn't even say which card it was; the credit card or the multi-access savings card. After wadding through the myriad phone prompts where I had no idea of my phone banking number (I do it all online) I finally got through to a human being. Turns out it was the multi-access debit card. I use that through the Mastercard system when buying stuff as it's a free transaction that way out of my account.

Spoke to a nice lady who after some interrogation decided that I was who I said I was. And after some investigation by her on the PC at her end she went through the last few transactions from last night. There was a mysterious withdrawal of $600 from my account last night in Granville, which is miles out west. I disputed it and said I was in Surry Hills all night so I couldn't have withdrawn it way out there. 

Long story short they're sending me a new card and I'll keep the $600. They also have to enable the account again which they said wouldn't take long. It's a hassle for me but I was pretty impressed at how quickly the bank picked up the fraud. I mean this only happened last night.

But anyway I've had to pay the rent manually this morning with my credit card as the auto payment was from the savings account. Will have to use cash from the credit card as well. The lady did however say that the bank would "certainly look at" refunding any interest incurred because of the fraud. It won't be much but I think that's quite fair of the bank. Is gonna take 3-4 working days to send out my new card.

I hope that bloody Australia Post knows where I live now. Although I have been getting normal letter mail, so I guess it's just their eparcel contractor who's fucked.

Update:

Looked online today and the account is back and working. The only problem is that the $600 hadn't been put back in. So I rang the bank again and long story short, they're giving me an overdraft on the account limited to the $600 whilst they conduct their investigation. My complaint was that (even though I could make up the $600 myself) it wasn't my fault and why should I have to fuck around doing that?

Update 2:

Must have been an open and shut case. Instead of giving me the overdraft limit they've simply refunded the $600 back into my account. A pretty good effort on the part of the bank. 

I'd still like to know how the hell it happened though. Whoever got the money out of the machine in Granville would've had to have another card and my pin number. 


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