So it gets to Monday morning and despite my current state of health I’m up with the lark and itching to phone the fraud department. Of course they don’t open until 9am, but at least that gives me time to get a coffee and for the house to empty.Strangely I’m not at all upset by this fraud – some of my friends are doing all the stressing, worrying on my behalf – but me? I feel calm and accepting of the fact that there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. So, coffee in situ and 9am comes and I’m on the phone. I get through to a very pleasant voiced person and he assures me that they already have all the detail and the investigation has begun. Of course I’ve a few questions about the whole process and when I’d see the money back in my account … apparently they need to allow all the debits that are already in process to either come through to my account or to ‘drop off’. Not that I understand that and even after asking I don’t understand why the other transactions aren’t just cancelled!
Anyway, here we are nearly a week later and the fraud has got to the tune of £780 give or take a few pennies and not the original £1,400 I’d guesstimated – but then I still figure that there are some transactions that may yet appear.
In the meantime I’ve been given an emergency, interest free overdraft of £1,200 to cover potential shortfalls, etc. Halifax reckon it typically takes 7 working days for all the transactions to work through before they can send me the paperwork. Of course I was advised that should this prove to not be fraud, then I would be liable to pay it all back. However, to his credit, the customer service rep instantly said “but I can clearly see this is fraud”.
Being the nosey type I asked if he had any idea of how this happened given that I know it wasn’t my fault. He verbally shrugged his shoulders and simply said no but that they have had a recent rise in this type of fraud. So my guesses are (and in no particular order):
- an inside job from an unhappy call centre worker
- a man in the middle attack spoofing Halifax Secure
- or loss of data either internally or form a business (online or not).
So at this point in time I’m in the very unusual position of seeing my account in the red – not something I ever wanted to see again but at least I’m free of the guilt associated with it this time round.
