Chris has been banking with Lloyds TSB for about 40 years and in that time she's had acceptable service. Of late, however, things have been going a bit wrong...
A month or so ago she noticed an odd and unauthorised transaction on her bank statement. It was a debit against a Visa Debit card. The statement entry was "NFI*WWW.NETFLIX.CO US 07.99". There was also a fee for the Sterling > Dollar currency-conversion.
She called the bank and complained, the bank investigated and told Chris that "the transaction was for a subscription to a service that streams video to Playstations and X-Boxes". Chris explained that she has never set up such a subscription and that we've never owned either a Playstation or an X-Box. Eventually the bank gave her a refund and supposedly put in place measures to prevent it happening again. As part of those measures, Chris had to destroy her then-active debit card and wait for a new one. Lloyds TSB would further investigate the transaction and would send Chris the details thereof.
Happiness was restored... until last night...
Chris was checking her statement again and found that a further unauthorised transaction for the same bogus subscription, and against the same card, had been allowed after her first complaint. She was furious. She looked again at her statements and realised that both unauthorised transactions were against one of her Visa Debit cards that had expired way back in 2007! We were bemused as to how it would be possible to set up a new bogus subscription using details from a card that had expired four years ago.
When she phoned the bank this morning I had to leave the room and take cover. The bank got both barrels for many reasons - not only for their failure to prevent recurrence, but also for the fact that they'd not sent her those promised details of the first transaction AND for the revelation that they now expected Chris to cancel the bogus subscription herself, despite her having no details of the service or the perpetrator. They gave her a website address and effectively told her to get on with it. Unbelievable!
We checked the website and, after being redirected to here, we found that it proudly states "Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country... yet". So why would Chris ever want such a subscription?
We've done a bit of digging here and we reckon that it's possible (but not certain) that Chris's expired card details were nabbed from Amazon (UK), as it's the only place where we could find said details stored for an online service that Chris has used. Amazon did show the card as "expired". Chris has now deleted all of her card details that were filed with Amazon (UK).
This morning we contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service. It was explained to Chris that the practice of allowing transactions against expired debit cards is uncommon but not illegal - in some circumstances, it is allowed. It's difficult to see, however, how those circumstances apply in this case. Nevertheless, the F.O.S. will send a formal letter of complaint to Lloyds TSB regarding their failure to prevent further unauthorised transactions for the bogus subscription as per Chris's request.
Hopefully Lloyds TSB will address this matter before they lose yet another customer.
FWIW, Chris works for one of the Big Three worldwide express delivery companies, maintaining and developing their Global Accounts Receivable system. What she doesn't know about the legalities, complexities and ethics of international monetary transactions isn't worth squat. Lloyds TSB really shouldn't mess with her, maybe they should employ her instead!
So, dear reader, please be aware that the details of all your expired, cut-up-and-binned/burned Visa Debit cards aren't necessarily dead. They could come back to screw up your finances at any time.
