For those of you not familiar with the title, it’s a reference to a Fonejacker character – an African fraudster who tries to deceive people into divulging their bank details to the unsuspecting punters he rings up. Today, I am that punter.

Yes, today I found out that I am the victim of Visa fraud. No – I didn’t divulge my details to an African chap wanting my sort-code and account number – but it appears that my debit card details have been plundered by some scammers.

I got a call today at work on my mobile from a polite young lady claiming to be calling from Barclays Fraud Detection Team – being fairly paranoid and wary of the lengths fraudsters will go to to steal one’s identity, I didn’t divulge any personal information to the lady and rang the bank up using the number printed on the back of the plastic card. After some faffing around with Barclays’ phone system, I was put through to the Fraud Team, and ended up speaking to the lady I first spoke to.

She wanted to speak to me as my account had been flagged up for some purchases made out of my ‘buying pattern’, and they wanted to confirm that these were my purchases. This has happened to me once before, when I bought a HD television – which clearly is out of most people’s ‘buying patterns’ as it’s not something you buy everyday. In that case, Barclays refused to authorise the payment to the retailer, and I had to faff about to get the TV re-ordered.

She asked me if I’d made a number of purchases on my card – the usual stuff – did I shop at Morrisons on this date, did I buy Dominos on that date, which were my transactions, until she got to yesterday, when she asked if I’d spent £204.95 with a company called ‘Voucher Express’ and had I then attempted to top my O2 PAYG mobile up with £50 of credit. I hadn’t. I don’t even have an O2 PAYG mobile. I’ve never heard of ‘Voucher Express’!

The lady explained to me that even though I had confirmed that these transactions were not mine, Barclays had already authorised this £204.95 payment, and that there was ‘nothing they could do’, at least not until the company in question actually took the money – and then I could claim it back, and have the money returned – in “6 to 10 working days”! That’s 200 quid! Of my money! The other transaction (for the mobile top-up) had been denied by Barclays – presumably it wasn’t outside of my ‘buying pattern’ to spunk 200 notes on fucking gift vouchers!?

Dis-satisfied, I decided to hunt down this ‘Voucher Express’ company. Which, to be fair, took all of 3 seconds to type ‘voucher express’ into Google, and to click on their homepage. Thankfully, they appear to be a reputable company, and calling their Customer Support line is no hassle at all – with no queues or automated systems. I explain the situation to a nice lady at Voucher Express, and I give her the debit card number for her to locate any orders placed with them (the card’s cancelled now, so ‘hiding’ the number is pointless). Their system is playing up, so she says she’ll ring me back in 10 minutes. I give her my number and ring off, believing I’d just wasted my time.

Not so! As promised, she rings back – and, yes, she’s found an order in their system placed on my card! What’s more, she says that the order has already been cancelled as they suspected it was fraudulent. This is excellent news! The next part, however, was the best bit – she gave me the full name and address details of the attempted delivery! You gotta love companies that don’t respect the Data Protection Act in cases like this!

I feed this info back to Barclays, who I suspect will do precisely nothing at all with it, but at least it makes me feel better. It also makes me feel that I’m absolutely fucking positively glad that I’m leaving their customer ranks. If a small internet retailer selling gift vouchers can detect a fraudulent transaction, but banking giants Barclays can’t, sheesh!

I’m going to go back through my statements and re-trace where I’ve used that card online in the last few weeks, and narrow down a list of ‘suspect’ websites where my details have been stolen/intercepted. Of course, it’s possible that the card could have been skimmed in a shop or restaurant, but I don’t let that card out of my sight, so I’m not sure when anyone would have the opportunity to skim it. I also don’t believe this to be an identity-theft issue – I use a Mac and therefore aren’t as susceptible to viruses and spyware, I shred my old post, and I’ve not had anything ‘odd’ drop onto my doormat saying I’ve applied for a credit card/mobile phone/mortgage in Botswana.

I’ll certainly be using my debit card details less often online after this. A thoroughly depressing day.

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