"Andy Pandy" wrote in message
...
"Iain" wrote in message
...
"Andy Pandy" wrote in message
...

Then the CC company have broken the terms of the DD guarantee which
require 2 weeks notice of any change in the amount (for CC the amount
will change every month).

This is one of the major problems with (credit) cards; the cardholder has
no control over this. A credit card 'direct debit' is a complete
fallacy - it simply does not exist.

You misunderstand. We were discussing the situation where someone has a
DD, a proper, real DD on his current account, to pay the CC off in full.

Absolutely right - my mistake.
Iain

Just to update this, I completed the online form on the FSA site as a
"complaint". I received a phone call today to tell me that the FSA has
nothing to do with credit cards only banks. They say I must take the
ombudsmans route.

Get yourself a life mate.


"Andy Pandy" wrote in message
...

"John Burke" wrote in message
...
Andy Pandy wrote:
"Dan Charette" wrote in message
o.uk...

I gave clear details in my OP. Believe me - it is a fraud.

But you don't have a clue as who the fraudster is.

As if that makes any difference whatsoever, ffs.

Of course it makes a difference. The OP was whinging that his bank won't
stop transactions to a "fraudulent" company, when in all likelyhood the
company isn't fraudulent.

If you really
think a company can set up merchant facilities and go round making
only fraudulent transactions then you really haven't got a clue.

That's just a contrived insult - the OP hasn't claimed anywhere to know
the
method or instrument used.

He claimed that 'The "company "(I'm 99% sure) is set up simply to direct
debit
credit cards until they are noticed.'

A
few other people suffering fraud via the same company proves nothing,

And you say the OP hasn't a clue...

Well he's got more of one than you, I'll give him that.

The company could have 1000 transactions per week on a CNP basis. They are
almost certain to get a few fraudulent ones. CNP is prone to fraud by its
nature, particularly for stuff like downloads where a delivery address
isn't required.

When the CC companies try to make it more secure (eg Verified by VISA etc)
you get people whinging that by making it more secure the CC company make
it more likely that if the security is breached they'll have more of a
case for arguing that it wasn't actually fraud and the cardholder did in
fact make the transaction. So many people seem to like it being insecure
for this reason.

...it probably just indicates they use CNP transactions and are prepared
to take the risk of the occasional fraud.

What absolute twaddle, as if.

Are you really that stupid? If a retailer makes a 10% profit margin on a
product then they won't be bothered if 0.1% of transactions are
fraudulent. It reduces their profit margin to 9.9%

The OP raised a matter of valid concern for people who are responsible
with their money and you've got nothing better to do than flame
him.

I already replied to him point by point, explaining why some of his
concerns are misplaced. He then replies with a one-liner which doesn't
address my points. And the likes of you comes along with nothing to add
except the usual "yes isn't it terrible" useless bull****.

You can go in my killfile now and I suggest the OP does the same.

Good. No more useless replies to me from a waste of bandwidth.

--
Andy

Thanks for your help. In fact - to my suprise the chap from the FSA who
called me today told me that the FSA has nothing to do with credit card
comopanies. Bizarre.


"Iain" wrote in message
...
"Dan Charette" wrote in message
news
Thanks John,

My approach is that I've asked for the two transactions to be reversed.
If a third appears next month I will request under the freedom of
information act details of all correspondence with respect to how they
have proactively investigated the reported fraud and who they have
reported it to in order to catch the miscreants and as a part of their
fraud reduction initiatives. The two reversals is evidence to support my
claim that it should at least be investigated as a potential fraud, but I
suspect they do nothing because there is no potential for them to lose
any money.

I will also ask them for details of their standing instructions as to how
they deal with this type of notification. If it is clear that they
basically ignore it I'll pursue an enquiry through the FSA and any other
suitable publicity vehicle. There is still clearly a misunderstanding
about the fact that direct debits do not exist in the same way as for
bank accounts.

You will need to understand the Freedom of Information Act.
"The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to ask for official
information from public authorities."
http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/fre...formation.aspx
So I would not have thought that the FoI Act applies to anything you are
mentioning.

What you are probably referring to (at the top) is making a Subject Access
Request under the Data Protection Act. This normally gives you access to
all personal information about yourself, as a living individual. This
will give you more information about your rights under the DPA:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documen...on/toolkit.pdf
Regarding the copies of correspondence concerning this, you probably are
entitled to see it as there may not be a third party involved. You may
want to confirm this with the Information Commissioner's Office first.

Hopefully the CC company will have a policy that they should be able to
let you have. Otherwise the FSA may have a standard one.

Iain

"Dan Charette" writes:

Just to update this, I completed the online form on the FSA site as a
"complaint". I received a phone call today to tell me that the FSA has
nothing to do with credit cards only banks. They say I must take the
ombudsmans route.

Surely most credit cards are 'run' by banks even though they may use a
different brand name.

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:38:45 +0000, Graham Murray
wrote:

"Dan Charette" writes:

Just to update this, I completed the online form on the FSA site as a
"complaint". I received a phone call today to tell me that the FSA has
nothing to do with credit cards only banks. They say I must take the
ombudsmans route.

Surely most credit cards are 'run' by banks even though they may use a
different brand name.

Indeed. The FSA web site is predictably vague in this respect stating
"The FSA regulates most financial services markets, exchanges and
firms ...".

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
[Reply-to address valid until it is spammed.]

Andy Pandy wrote:

"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Andy Pandy wrote:
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Andy Pandy wrote:

Erm, no, the retailer (I suspect) loses the money and therefore
clearly is the direct victim. There might be circumstances where it's
the bank which loses the money.

You clearly don't use the same definition of direct as I do. I
probably should never have mentioned directness (in fact I'm not sure I
was first to do so) since it really matterns not a jot whether any
victim is direct
or indirect, what matters is that there is a victim, or more than one.

To my mind the direct victim is not the one who suffers the ultimate
loss, but the one who suffers the first loss.

What loss? If it's on a credit card then he's suffered no loss until and
unless he pays the amount (or any interest on said amount).

It might be a debit card.

Read the thread title.

Oh. OK.

Even if it's a credit card, he might have a
standing arrangement to pay the full balance each month by direct debit.
There might not be enough time inbetween the bill arriving and his
noticing
the dubious charge in time to notify the card company, them sending a
paper
form to be completed, him to return it, and thus for the amount to be put
into "disputed" status before the DD goes through.

Then the CC company have broken the terms of the DD guarantee which
require 2 weeks notice of any change in the amount (for CC the amount will
change every month).

I think you'll find there is no specific requirement of 2 weeks, but
only some vague requirement of adequate notice. In practice it's
in the vicinity of 2 weeks for many organisations, but typically it's
less. My BT bill (dated 17th) just arrived this morning (20th) and
says payment will be taken on or just after 31st. That's just under
2 weeks. Amex regularly sails very much closer to the wind. My last
bill was dated 22nd Dec and said payment would be taken on 30th (and
it was). Weather and season related postal delays meant I didn't
actually receive the bill until after payment was taken. It brought
me quite close to asking my bank for a refund - just to test the
system - but in the end I couldn't be bothered.

The disputed
amount should be held in limbo and no interest should be charged on it
and
if he normally pays in full he should be able to pay in full minus the
disputed amount and get treated as if he paid in full.

If he does notice and contacts the card company, he has immediately
suffered the loss of free time needed to deal with this.

What about his time posting on usenet?

What about it? He lost *some* free time dealing with it. Doesn't mean
he didn't still have plenty left. Are you trying to justify stealing
from the rich on the grounds that it doesn't really affect them because
they have plenty more?

That is the cardholder.
He may, through some action, offload the loss of money to
retailer/bank, but that offloading is a redirection, an indirection,
and that makes the
retailer/bank indirect victims. Even if he thus manages to avert loss
of money, he remains a victim in terms of loss of time and bliss, and
that is clearly direct too.

As does the bank. That's just as direct - it'll take them time and
effort to sort out.

Grr. It's *NOT* direct. The fact that a party suffers a loss makes them
a victim, but not necessarily a direct one. Directness is to do with
flow
of causation. If event A causes event B and this in turn causes event C,
then B is a direct consequence of A, and C is an indirect consequence of
A.

Erm, yes.

Event A appears to be some fraudster conning some company into parting
with goods/services with credit card details which weren't theirs.

Event B is the credit card transaction details being passed to the OPs
bank.

Event C is the OP getting a false charge on his credit card statement.

So event C is an indirect consequence of the fraud (event A).

Very good, you're beginning to get the idea. Now substitute "victim"
for "event" and let's see where that gets us. The first (most direct)
victim is the cardholder because he's the first to suffer a loss (by
auto-paying his bill and/or by suffering irritation and hassle) as a
result of the fraudster obtaining goods with someone else's card. Next,
he queries the amount with the CC co, which results in a chargeback to
the merchant, who is therefore the indirect victim. QED.

That banks attempt to fob you off when you report an unauthorised
transaction? In that case I'd agree with you - but that's not what
happened in the OPs case

I thought it was, why else would he (see subject line) accuse them
of assisting fraudsters?

His point was they won't put a block on future transactions. Not that
they
won't refund the current ones.

Not completely true. He did have a gripe about not blocking future
transactions, but he *also* said they wouldn't refund.

So they're just sending him some forms to fill in for fun?

I'm just going by what he said. He said they wouldn't refund. Perhaps
he just meant they wouldn't refund straight away. One problem was, if
you recall, that he hadn't noticed immediately, and his card bill had
already paid itself by DD, so the usual route of putting the amount into
"disputed" status, which would presumably have resulted in the amount
being excluded from what is taken by DD, was no longer open.

He also wrote "It seems reasonable to me that if I alert the credit card
company to what is a fraud that they would have a simple mechanism to
check
my story (they have found the Google links and agree it appears to be
fraud)
refund the amounts and stop further debits. But they tell me that this
isn't
possible."

Read his lips: ".. refund the amounts .. isn't possible".

Read the words and use your logic (which I'm sure you use to have :-).

You rascal!

If (X AND Y) is false, then Y alone can be false to make (X AND Y) false.

So if "refund the amounts" is possible but "stop further debits" isn't,
then "refund the amounts and stop further debits" is not possible.

It's OK, sonny, I can still do logic, and know fine well that in logic
"(A AND B) is impossible" means "at least one of A or B is impossible"
[strictly this isn't entirely true because "impossible" and "false" are
not quite the same thing, but let's not worry about that]. I can also
observe, as no doubt can you, that general conversation doesn't always
adhere to the rules of logic, and the same statement can mean both A
and B are impossible.

Another possibility is that the OP intended the "this" in "this isn't
possible" to refer only to the last item in his list and not to the
whole list, but that doesn't totally fit with the rest of his narrative.

Fergus O'Rourke wrote:

"Iain" wrote in message
...
[snip]
Once a continuing authority has been established, it is only the
organisation with whom the arrangement has been made who can cancel - not
the cardholder; any amount can be deducted at any time. This is unless
the cardholder can show that the other party has, for instance, reneged
on the agreement, eg. has not supplied the service.
[snip]

That may be (probably is with most CC companies) the practice, but IMHO is
not one which the FOS or a court would endorse.

It's not true that once a continuing authority has been established, only
the merchant in question can cancel it. Only the cardholder can cancel
(withdraw) the *authority*, but only the merchant can take the action of
stopping their system from charging the holder's card with further
instalments. To this end it is of course necessary (other than in the
case of a self-expiring arrangement) for the carholder to communicate
the withdrawal of his authority to the merchant.

Once the cardholder has withdrawn the authority, he is entitled to
require his card company to reverse all subsequent transactions, but
nothing can be done to avoid the tedium of having to do this each
and every time, until his communication to the merchant eventually
falls on non-deaf ears and is acted upon.

Mark wrote:

On Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:51:16 GMT, Ronald Raygun
wrote:

I'm sure you remember that advert in which a test dummy crashes a
car into a wall, whereupon the wife immediately nags: "Why don't you
watch where you're going?", and he shrugs and says "It just came out
of nowhere.".

Well, in real life walls and trees and other solid objects *don't*
just come out of nowhere, you can always see them coming, and the
only way you're going to hit them (other than deliberately) is if
you lose control of the car. Provided your speed is such that in the
conditions prevailing at the time it isn't going to make loss of
control likely, there is no reason not to treat the speed limit with
the pinch of salt it deserves.

Statistics show that collisions are more likely the faster you travel.

Statistics probably show that more driving tests are failed by 18-year-olds
than by candidates of any other age. Statistics probably also show that
more driving tests are passed by 18-year-olds than others. This leads to
the absurdity that it tempts us to draw two contradictory conclusions at
the same time, namely that 18-years olds are both the worst and the best
drivers of all age groups. Yet both observations are easily explained by
the simple fact that more 18-year-olds *sit* the test than anyone else
(because they want to get their licences as early as possible).

Statistics probably show that fewer accidents involve drunk drivers than
sober drivers. Does that allow us to conclude that we should all drink
more when we drive? Well, no, not necessarily, it depends on what the
proportion of drunk drivers overall is.

So if statistically more collisions occur at higher speeds this could just
be a reflection of more cars travelling at higher speeds when a collision
just happens to occur, it doesn't necessarily establish that higher speed
makes collisions more likely. Consider also that lower speed collisions
will tend to involve less damage, and are apt to go unreported, skewing
the statistics.

Speed limits are there for a reason and that's not just safety.

That sounds bizarre. What reasons other than safety are there?

Drivers going too fast is also a problem for other motorists as cars
are travelling quicker than expected.

I agree, and likewise cars travelling slower than expected pose
problems too.

You know what they say, most people hit at 30 survive, most people hit
at 40 don't. So if you do 50 in a 40 zone, that's speeding too. If you
didn't speed there, and went at 40 like a good boy, people getting hit
would
get killed too, despite no speeding being involved. Just goes to show
how artificial a crime speeding is.

Rubbish. Going too fast for the road conditions is more dangerous.

More than what?

More dangerous that not going too fast.

I think that statement would sound better without
the word "more".

Driving is dangerous in the sense that it is not without risk. Driving
faster increases this risk. However most of the risk is not for the
driver but for the more vulnarable such as motorbike riders,
pedestrians and cyclists.

But what is "too fast"? This isn't easy to quantify, and I'm sure you
agree that it depends on road conditions, so that there are times when,
be it due to poor visibility, slippery surfaces, or more people than usual
milling about, driving at the legal limit would be unsafe (too fast).
Equally you must accept that there are times when it is perfectly safe to
exceed the legal limit. Traffic authorities set limits which are arbitrary
and are designed to fit with typical conditions, not with all conditions.

I completely agree that if road conditions are poor
you should drive more carefully and probably more slowly than when
conditions are fine. But I pointed out that if you drive at 40 in
a 40 zone, i.e. are not speeding, and assuming conditions are good, then
someone could still appear out of nowhere and if hit would likely die
*despite* no speeding being involved. That the limit there is 40 and
not 30 is completely arbitrary. That the limit somewhere else is 30
and not 40 is also completely arbitrary.

I wouldn't like to gamble about whether or not someone would die if
hit at any particular speed.

Exactly, so just don't hit them. :-)

Are you happy with the local traffic authority to gamble by making some
roads 30 limits and others 40?

That's why almost everyone treats the limit only as a rough guide,

People exceed the speed limit because they are impatient and selfish
and don't expect to get caught (or don't mind being caught).

That's true for some, but for most, it's because they have made a judgement
that it is safe, and of course in a situation where the general flow
of traffic is already moving (moderately) in excess of the legal limit,
it undoubtedly *is* safer to fit in than to be the only one not breaking
the law.

even the police, who ought to be setting a good example to the rest
of us. Not many people generally cruise slower than 35 on a main road
in a 30 zone, and moreover this is officially tolerated by the ACPO
guidelines, which is a great pity because it mocks the law. It would be
far better to make the limit 35 and enforce it strictly than to make the
limit 30 and allow a 5mph tolerance band.

I can't explain or defend why procecution only occurs at a speed
higher than the limit. Just because a lot of people regularly break
the limit does not make it acceptable. Cars have speedometers so
there's little excuse for exceeding the limit.

One possible explanation is that the powers that be are happy for us
to drive at 35, but know that the only way to ensure that most of us
stay below 35 is to make the nominal limit 30. Speedometers have
historically not been easy to calibrate properly, some will over- and
some will under-read a bit, so it's not easy for drivers to know
whether they're just over or just under. Some car manufacturers used
to deliberately skew the tolerance to over-read, to make people think
they were driving faster than in fact they were, thus making it less
likely they'd get caught. Nowadays speedos are more likely to be
digital rather than the old induced-current spinning disc against a
spring, so they ought to be accurate (modulo varying tyre circumference)
but I'm not sure whether they're still designed to over-read. People
who were accustomed from the old speedos to know that indicated 35
meant 30 actual, may still think indicated 35 is OK.

Ronald Raygun writes:

Statistics probably show that more driving tests are failed by 18-year-olds
than by candidates of any other age. Statistics probably also show that
more driving tests are passed by 18-year-olds than others. This leads to
the absurdity that it tempts us to draw two contradictory conclusions at
the same time, namely that 18-years olds are both the worst and the best
drivers of all age groups. Yet both observations are easily explained by
the simple fact that more 18-year-olds *sit* the test than anyone else
(because they want to get their licences as early as possible).

Statistics probably show that fewer accidents involve drunk drivers than
sober drivers. Does that allow us to conclude that we should all drink
more when we drive? Well, no, not necessarily, it depends on what the
proportion of drunk drivers overall is.

So if statistically more collisions occur at higher speeds this could just
be a reflection of more cars travelling at higher speeds when a collision
just happens to occur, it doesn't necessarily establish that higher speed
makes collisions more likely. Consider also that lower speed collisions
will tend to involve less damage, and are apt to go unreported, skewing
the statistics.

In all of these case the answer is that the wrong statistics are being
generated. In the first case, it should be the proportion of each age
who take the driving test who pass it. In the second it should be a
comparison of the proportion of drunk drivers who have an accident
compared with the proportion of sober drivers who have an accident. In
the last case it should be a comparison of the proportion of cars
travelling at each speed who have a collision. In most cases, the
comparison of the proportion of populations is more meaningful than the
comparison of absolute numbers where the size of the populations are
different.