Annoying,Bank keep blocking online Tranascations .

kmufc77

kmufc77

kmufc77

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Joined
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hi for about the 10th time this year Abbey have decided to block a £320 Tranascation from a bolton PC retailer.

last night i ordered a Ati 5870 sorry ocuk 0 in stock here, when the retailer processed my order this morning i had a message to ring them as payment has been declined.

So i rang abbey who told me my card was blocked due to fraud on my account ?, bearing in mind ive had to use Visa vertified and input my online password to use the card, meaning im the only person on planet earth that knows the password.

I was then put through to a call centre in india who then asked security details which i confirmed, however when i gave them my card number the indian call centre person told me that card number dosent exist on abbeys records,you can imagine by now i was annoyed and then be told my card cant be used till i visit a abbey bank.

earlier i again rang abbey with confirming the same problem and was then pushed around several other call centres to deal with my problem and was on the phone for 38 minutes!.

I eventually got my card unlocked after all this hassle and then was told they cannot tell me why my card was blocked? and for only £320
what annoys me is now if i spend £200 -£300 theres a high chance my card will be blocked and i have the hassle of ringing abbey and spending money on a phone bill for something that is never my fault

This has happened roughly 10 times now on Tranascations of around £200-300 im looking at leaving abbey tommorow and getting a new account and was wondering if anyone else has had issues like myself today thats the rant over now.
 
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My mom has a refund on a canceled visa, returned something to the store & used the wrong card. It was maybe a year back they never fixed it, they have been called though many times,
 
my bank have blocked many transactions of mine before, and sometimes when they go through they ring me up the next day to make sure it was me who ordered it, even if it was 5 pound or 200 pound, i like it in a way, but it does get annoying when you want something, you have the money in your bank and they just say no sorry :D, then you try another 10 times and its the same thing over and over "Im sorry we cannot do this transaction today" and then you want to smash your computer up :p
 
At the start of this month I made a few purchases on-line with my Abbey debit card, only to recieve an automated call going through every transaction that I had made which it wanted me to confirm, I too had to enter the Visa password so this baffled me.
 
Probably feeling the pinch due to the recession and 3D-Secure shifting fraud liability onto them.

They could issue you *real* pin codes for 3D-Secure (like they do with cards) or they could even issue you with OTP tokens or the little chip+pin thing barclay has been using for online banking and make 3D-Secure a useful security measure.

But for now they're just cranking up the dial on their decades old fraud detection machine, it didn't work then, it doesn't work now.
 
I have three credit cards ... only one of which works on OcUK, not due to a problem at their end but due to the issuers ... main problem is that I can never remember which one is the one that works!

Admittedly I hardly ever use one of the cards so when I do try even for a tiny transaction then it tends to get queried :rolleyes:
 
I really feel for bank fraud departments, people complain when they let everything through but also complain if a genuine transaction gets flagged and stopped. I believe that online computer retailers are common targets of people with stolen card details, so banks are very careful about transactions going through.

One of the biggest problems I had when working for a bank was that you needed to get the right person/department to get any information. Customer services were always awful for claiming something wasn't possible if they didn't know how. It's likely that the fraud department know why your card was stopped but whoever you spoke to just didn't know how to find out.
 
Vixen said:
I really feel for bank fraud departments, people complain when they let everything through but also complain if a genuine transaction gets flagged and stopped. I believe that online computer retailers are common targets of people with stolen card details, so banks are very careful about transactions going through.

One of the biggest problems I had when working for a bank was that you needed to get the right person/department to get any information. Customer services were always awful for claiming something wasn't possible if they didn't know how. It's likely that the fraud department know why your card was stopped but whoever you spoke to just didn't know how to find out.
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ive got every right to complain when nearly every transaction i make online over £200 gets blocked and when even entering my visa vertified password which im the only person in the world that
knows it.

and then i spend nearly 40 mins on the phone which im paying for to get it sorted thats not good service especially when ive enterd a secure password
rediculious system, im afraid to spend a couple hundred quid now and then go shopping say and have my card declined at the till ,brillaint that.
 
Get yourself one of those "top up" debit card things. You the one where you top it up and obviously can only spend what you have put on it. Transfer the amount you want to buy your item for onto it and then use that to buy it. If you do this a few days in advance of ordering your item then you have plenty of time to sort out any blocked payements ( should any arise).
 
Barclays loved to do that to my dad once a fortnight ... he told them to bugger off eventually and they stopped :D
 
kmufc77 said:
ive got every right to complain when nearly every transaction i make online over £200 gets blocked and when even entering my visa vertified password which im the only person in the world that
knows it.
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Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode are NOT to be trusted.

Ever taken a look at the info they require you type in if you forget your password? Three things.

Also, sometimes when you phone your bank, the person may be having a bad morning and not be bothered doing the proper checks to ensure it's you they're talking to. "Hello I'd like to change my password..."

There are ways around it.
 
I never understood the point in those securecode things as they can be easily bypassed, stupid thing wouldn't regonise my details so I just ordered over the phone instead.
 
I had an IT guy who did some contacting for Santander complaining to me earlier in the year that they were taking their Spanish systems, which are not as advanced as UK personal banking, and trying to put their new UK aquisitions on to that system. He was specifically talking about mortgages, but he said the results were far from favourable.

My old Dad worked for Bank of Scotland when they merged with Halifax. Bank of Scotland had good systems, he says, and Halifax were a building society with bad systems, everything went onto the Halifax system. Apparently suddenly bank accounts had to have roll numbers as well, which is a real step backwards.

Perhaps Abbey credit cards are all being merged with Santander systems, along with A&L and B&B?

You should open a card with a different provider.

I did try to find any information on false positive detection rates on the net, but I wasn't able to.

The reason why banks decline transactions is because they may end up paying the bill if it's fraudulent (usually it's the retailer, it should never, ever be the customer). So if they're not sure they decline.

A false positive is where they decline a valid transaction - you want a card provider with a low figure on false positives. Banks use "expert systems" which are computer programs that learn over time what's likely to be fraudulent and what isn't. Expert systems aren't new things, they're also used for weather prediction and spam detection. Essentially you can't, in advance, tell the program how to tell the difference between fraud and non-fraud, so every time a transactions happens which was fraud the system will learn the characteristics.

I suspect some banks are much better than others, but without more information I couldn't tell you.

I'd avoid a faceless card provider - Virgin, MBNA, etc. Go for a card provider that's also a retail bank, they are far more likely to have a better level of service.

As far as SecureCode and Verified By Visa are concerned they're a bit crap really. They're supposed to prevent fraud by ensuring that someone with a stolen credit card number and 3 digit code can't make transactions. What they actually do is just hamper real customers, because fraudsters just buy somewhere that doesn't have SecureCode/Verified By Visa.

I believe Mastercard is moving to make SecureCode mandatory, which is a step forward and will in my opinion kill card fraud rates. However I think they messed up their timescales...

Sadly many retailers make very little effort with their merchant systems. Most of the time when you get a transaction declined for a large purchase it hasn't actually been declined, it's just been "referred" which means phone the bank for additional security checks. Many retailers either have systems which can't cope, so they just fart it back out as declined, or they don't know what it means and decline it.
 
The Halk said:
A false positive is where they decline a valid transaction - you want a card provider with a low figure on false positives. Banks use "expert systems" which are computer programs that learn over time what's likely to be fraudulent and what isn't. Expert systems aren't new things, they're also used for weather prediction and spam detection. Essentially you can't, in advance, tell the program how to tell the difference between fraud and non-fraud, so every time a transactions happens which was fraud the system will learn the characteristics.

I suspect some banks are much better than others, but without more information I couldn't tell you.
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The automated systems don't stop anything, they just flag up transactions or trends for the fraud department. It's then up to the staff to decide whether or not something is genuine and put a temporary stop on the card until they can get in touch with the customer.

I'd be much more interested in the rate at which a bank catches fraudulent transactions than the number of genuine transactions stopped.
 
Vixen said:
The automated systems don't stop anything, they just flag up transactions or trends for the fraud department. It's then up to the staff to decide whether or not something is genuine and put a temporary stop on the card until they can get in touch with the customer.

I'd be much more interested in the rate at which a bank catches fraudulent transactions than the number of genuine transactions stopped.
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The automated systems either pass, refer or decline a transaction is what I was saying.

I'm not so bothered about catching fraudulent transactions because they don't affect me. Perhaps it's vanity, but a personal nightmare of mine is being in a shop and being unable to pay for the goods I've bought! :)

I've had fraud on my card (before I worked in the industry) and it was a pretty simple thing. The bank called me and said Mr Xxxx did you make this transaction? I said no, and they said "Ah we thought so" and then listed off the transactions that had already passed, some of which were fraud. Within a few months the money was back and the interest was removed. I didn't have to do anything. I'd much rather have that than the embarassment of having a card declined.
 
Yup, it can be a pain, but the worst thing, the absolute worst thing is not the odd transaction canceled. I've heard from a couple banks that a certain Bolton retailer, who had one 5870 in stock last night, that I almost ordered but then went missing(damn you), are a frequent target for fraud. I can't remember if it was them who had a dodgey person working for them 5-6 years ago and used a few cards to buy himself some stuff, apparently they haven't moved on from that.

Many places also "pre-approve" card athorisation when you put new card details in by putting through a £0-£1 transaction to make sure it works, banks also get upset at that.

I actually got a call from Barclays, automated, that flagged the transaction with some basic details, but nothing specific enough to use my details for anything, asked if I did anything with said retailer, and asked if it was ok. I refused the first call being a new number, checked the message, checked online and found the service was real thing.

But the worst thing as I was starting to say, was stupid banks refusing transactions on the basis that its not your normal spending pattern.


I've had this happen maybe 20 times in the past 18 months, each and every time for a recurring payment of some kind, once for Bethere, which I've been paying for 2 years, once for Lotro which at the time I'd been paying for 4 months or so, a couple times for newshosting.com who again i've been paying monthly for the best part of 3 years.

How are these, recurring payments I've never questioned, nor they, for years, being flagged as strange behaviour on my account.

There really are some complete and utter morons working at these banks. It is a catch 22, you don't want things you want not getting authorised, but likewise you don't want fraudulent stuff getting through, some things will get caught incorrectly which I can live with. but the truly stupid stuff like recurring payments suddenly being flagged is just retarded.

I guess one method that could ease the problems slightly, would be allowing you to log into your account and pre-approving a transaction you're about to make, so go on, list a retailers name, a rough amount(as people often add things to orders as they are just about to go in) which should ease things somewhat as people that oversee transactions can check the account info and see the person said they were about to spend £400-500 at ocuk, then they did, so in all likelyhood its fine so it gets authorised.

The barclays thing is pretty good, almost no details, then a rough idea of transactions, you either hit 1 to say its what you expect, or 2 to be put through to Barclays to talk further and maybe cancel the transaction. Even if they simplify it to sending you a text with every transaction anything you don't do, you phone them back and can sort it immediately before anyone using it for fraud goes on a spree.
 
This happens fairly often with my barclaycard, the worst thing is if you miss the automated phone call and have to phone them up manually, they can ask you the most amazingly vague security questions that if you haven't got your online statement open for (which they seem to block access to if you are on the phone to them at the time) you don't have a hope in hell of answering.

My MBNA Amex has been fine however.
 
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