Wife's been scammed good and proper

[Shewie]

Carol's fessed up to me tonight that's she's done something really dumb on the internet a few weeks ago.

Apparently while she was messing about on FaceAche a pop-up appeared promoting a free trial of slimming pills. She tried to get rid of it but it kept reappearing, the only way to get rid of it was to enter her card details and agree to a free trial but pay the postage. She's fairly PC savvy and I'm forever telling her to be careful online but this time she let her guard down. If any of you have ever met our lass there's not an ounce of fat on her but girls being girls she got drawn in.
A few weeks later and her bank statement turns up, £250+ lighter than it should be from two postage payments of £2.95 and two for £128 :yikes:

When she told me tonight and after I'd calmed down I did some digging around on the net, it's a well known scam apparently. Along with the postage payments agreed on the pop-up there's also some T&C's which state she's sign up for life and will incur the same charges indefinitely.

This post on another forum is exactly what's happened ..
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=42861630&postcount=257

Suffice to say no pills have turned up either, and to be honest if I'd found out she was going to take them I'd have flushed the lot down the toilet. "Distance Selling Regulations" might help here ??

I've just rung a Florida number we found on one of the threads and after being on hold for around 7 minutes we got through. As soon as we'd confirmed our address they hung up.

LloydsTSB seem reluctant to do anything but we will be ring the fraud department again tomorrow and kicking off.

So the plan is to ..

Get the debit card cancelled
Ask about recurring payments
Ask about "chargeback"
See if closing the account altogether will stop it

Anybody had any similar experiences ? Are there any tips to getting the money back or stopping the payments at least ?


Sorry for the rant but I've been well and truly wound up tonight !

 

[Toddy]

That's miserable Hope you get things sorted asap. No pills means the sale is invalid, doesn't it ?

as an aside, I find that by keeping multiple windows open, if one goes nuts I can click on the bar at the bottom of the screen and bring up a different window. I then click into File and click on Work Offline. That breaks the connection and allows me to right click on the Internet Explorer group at the bottom bar and click on close on the offending file. Shuts it down nicely

atb,
M

 

[Wayne]

Thanks for posting as sometimes even the best of us can let our guards down and do something we later regret. cancelling the debit card itself will not be enough as its the account that is going to be set up with the recurring fees. You will need to get the bank to agree to terminate the payments or close the account.

 

[Chambers]

Thats terrible, also report it to Facebook and kick off to them that they should vet their ads. I know with Barclays you are protected shopping online so hopefully Lloyds do something similar. As you say worse comes to worse close account and open a new one, I know its a ball ache and it wont get your money back but it will stop further loss. I cant see a company which commits fraud taking further action to pursue because of their T's & C's

Hope its gets sorted quick and the people responsible have their nether regions infected with itchy bugs and their arms be shrunk to short to scratch

 

[JonathanD]

That's awful mate. Hope you get things sorted.

 

[Sniper]

I was caught out with a scam a couple of years back so you have my genuine simpathy mate, however from that experience I learned you sometimes just have to take the initial blow to the chin but cancel any subsequent payments immediately. When I was caught with my pants down so to speak I really could not afford it which made the whole sorry business even more irritating and really got me down so please don't blame your wife for too long, save your anger for the beggars who scammed her. Sorry not a lot of help mate but we all live and learn and some lessons can be hard to take.

 

[slasha9]

Sorry to hear about your perils! Last Xmas I bought a shaver that was advertised on the TV and I bought it from their website, at the end of the transaction I was asked if I was interested in 'Discount Vouchers', so I said 'YES'

Hmmmmm

At the end of January I found out that the scam is that you get the shaver etc as normal but when you say 'yes' to the 'discount vouchers' then you are signing up to not one but TWO schemes that offer you money off vouchers (they are genuine savings, but there are so many vouchers of such small value that they are essentially worthless unless you go on about 200 holidays a year to get the money back). Both of the schemes take a small amount out of your account early on (I was told that this is to see if you notice a few quid disappear) and then a month or two later they come back for the serious money!

In my case the initial charge was £1.60 for each scheme and Then £89 a month for each scheme each month after that, luckily I cottoned on to one of the schemes and contacted the scammers and cancelled the contract (they claimed not to know that there was a second scheme). When I got hit by the £89 charge I got in touch with the bank (Lloyds) and they not only disputed the transaction through the card system but they gave me the number of the scheme.

This is where I seem to have had an easier ride than you have, I rang the scheme (who seemed to be in Ireland) and raised Holy Hell with them over the phone, within 48 hours I had the money back, an assurance that they weren't coming back for more money and an apology and tbf they haven't tried it again! I suspect that as my scammers are based in the EU and they are trying to pass themselves off as a legitimate business then they just try it on and see how many complain, and again tbf to Lloyds (who I am not a fan of and I have since started banking elsewhere) they were really quite keen to sort things out for me, but I beat them to it.

I would suggest that you got in touch with your local Trading Standards to see what they can do for you, you might find that your card company might be most useful, some of them have built in guarantees so you don't end up out of pocket

HTH

Sean

 

[calibanzwei]

That breaks the connection and allows me to right click on the Internet Explorer group at the bottom bar and click on close on the offending file...

There's your problem

 

[CBJ]

bad stuff, Hope you get it all sorted mate

craig

 

[Zingmo]

This scam was on telly a month or two back. IIRC the problem is that when you click through to the bit where you enter your details etc you actually click to the site of one of thousands of freelance retail scammers. This means you aren't actually doing business with the company who placed the ad.

Fight them to the bitter end.

Z

 

[Toddy]

There's your problem

I know Son1 referred to my request for Windows to be added to my computer years ago as, "Pretty pictures for idiots, Mum."
It's handy though, and to be fair it rarely causes me any grief.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[filcon]

Sorry to hear of your trouble Shewie, your wife must be feeling terrible. Thanks for sharing and bringing this to our attention.

phil

 

[Trunks]

Sheesh, that sucks! Rich, if Lloyds don't back you up, threaten to close your account & move your money somewhere else - threats & the withdrawal of funds - that's all banks respond to these days
Hope you get it sorted

 

[tobes01]

Argh. What a pain. Unfortunately because it was a debit card you're not covered by the consumer credit act, which would make life easier. However, get yourself into the bank and demand to see someone in charge. Raise the transactions as fraudulent with the bank and see what you can do. Instruct that you will not authorise further payments to that merchant. It will help if you have a letter ready-prepared to hand over to them. A good argument at this point will be that you expected the two small debits, but not the large ones, and have been wilfully misled by the Ts & Cs.

Also, try your local nick and see if they'll cooperate by allowing you to register a crime (some forces will show you the door because they know they've not a hope of even investigating, let alone securing a conviction). An incident number will go a long way towards persuading the bank to refund the money.

Finally, give these chaps a call: http://www.nfib.police.uk/ It might take you a few attempts to get through because they're under-resourced, but they know their stuff and if they receive sufficient aggregate complaints they can prepare an evidence package for action by the relevant police force - did some work for them and they've had some successes with eBay scammers in the past.

The moral of the story is NEVER use a debit card online since the money's gone as soon as the debit occurs. If you use a credit card then the Consumer Credit Act comes to your rescue and you've got stacks of cover if something like this happens...

 

[Manacles]

Argh. What a pain. Unfortunately because it was a debit card you're not covered by the consumer credit act, which would make life easier. However, get yourself into the bank and demand to see someone in charge. Raise the transactions as fraudulent with the bank and see what you can do. Instruct that you will not authorise further payments to that merchant. It will help if you have a letter ready-prepared to hand over to them. A good argument at this point will be that you expected the two small debits, but not the large ones, and have been wilfully misled by the Ts & Cs.

Also, try your local nick and see if they'll cooperate by allowing you to register a crime (some forces will show you the door because they know they've not a hope of even investigating, let alone securing a conviction). An incident number will go a long way towards persuading the bank to refund the money.

Finally, give these chaps a call: http://www.nfib.police.uk/ It might take you a few attempts to get through because they're under-resourced, but they know their stuff and if they receive sufficient aggregate complaints they can prepare an evidence package for action by the relevant police force - did some work for them and they've had some successes with eBay scammers in the past.

The moral of the story is NEVER use a debit card online since the money's gone as soon as the debit occurs. If you use a credit card then the Consumer Credit Act comes to your rescue and you've got stacks of cover if something like this happens...

Sorry to hear about this. I just wanted to add my voice to Tobes' as he is right, the Police internet fraud team are very good and will take it seriously, particulalry as it is unlikely just to be your good lady that these lowlifes are swindling. Hope you get it sorted ok.

 

[Bigfoot]

Also, try your local nick and see if they'll cooperate by allowing you to register a crime (some forces will show you the door because they know they've not a hope of even investigating, let alone securing a conviction). An incident number will go a long way towards persuading the bank to refund the money.

Yes, please make sure you do this. Some forces have an internet crime unit but even if your local bobby doesn't offer much in the way of help, an incident number confirms you have reported a crime and provides reference to the report.

 

[Doc]

If this is the viv3 promotion your wife is not alone - google viv3 and you can see loads of people have been caught out.

It's unclear to me if the company is UK-based, but if it is, you could raise an action in the small claims court. I think there is plenty of evidence on the internet to show their promotion is misleading, given that so many people have neen misled.

I would also contact Trading Standards at the local council.

 

[Suffolksteve]

I don't have any constructive advice, just wanted to say it sucks and it's so easy to be scammed as the scammers put so much effort into looking genuine.

 

[Melonfish]

I work in IT and i can totally sympathise shewie, day in day out we get people hit with fake anti virus programs warning them about these evil virus' that are infecting their pc and they'll need to upgrade to the full version of the program to get rid etc etc.
there are many guises for these scams and they're very tricksy indeed. father in law almost paid for one of them after it stopped his machine from working, it auto closed any programs he ran and re-directed his "internet exploder" to their web page.

For the record peeps the fix is to run your pc in Safe mode and run your virus scanner (official) in there, things like spybot, malwarebytes and macafee stinger.

i think this issue falls firmly under the 'you live you learn' category, defo cancel your card and chase up as much as you can but you may have to end up taking the hit for it.
at least she'll never do it again.
I've got SWMBO brainwashed so anything that she's unsure about that pops up requires the magic key phrase 'PEEEETE!'
hope you do get your money back dude i really do.
pete

 

[Tank]

Its shocking how many scams there are out there and how they get your money. I am always worried when my wife decided to buy something of the internet, so i tend to do it for her as she just clicks yet to everything (and she complains that here inbox is full of spam and why we get phone calls all the time!)

I dont have any advice on how to sort the issue out, but the best thing to prevent stuff like this is never use a debit card online, always use a creditcard. Something i plan to do is ditch the debitcard and use the creditcard more.

Good luck with getting your money back.