I stayed at a hotel in Leeds last night. Checked out at 11am this morning, got a call from my bank’s fraud line about 12:30 to query some transactions. Long story short, I managed to leave my bank card in the hotel room and the (presumably) cleaner took it upon themselves to have a bit of a contactless shopping spree at my expense. Two things:

1) I’ve emailed the hotel to make them aware and plan to contact the police tomorrow. What’s the likelihood of anything coming of it, and is there anything else I should be doing?

2) How bloody stupid do you have to be to commit such obviously traceable fraud (unless they’re banking on the cops going “meh”)?

I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing happens. The bank will take the money back from the shops and stick it back in your account. The shops won’t bother as they will find it hard to prove who did the buying and the police won’t give a damn as its money / fraud / not one of the things they are able to do anything about. Sadly. Hopefully you get all your money about.

It depends what evidence the police can get as to what they can do.
This case is pretty similar. Alleged offender was caught on CCTV which is how they were identified.
Lost her job too.
How bloody stupid? Extremely stupid.

Hopefully you get all your money

I should.

I suspect it was flagged up as it was used in quick succession by the fraudster in Leeds and then me buying coffee half an hour away in Whetherby. They tried to argue that they couldn’t refund anything prior to me being in Costa as I’d “used the card” so I had to explain the concept of contactless payments on my phone.

Transactions take a day or two to appear on my statement though, so we’ll see. I’m lucky that it’s not a vast amount of money compared to what it perhaps could have been, probably under £100 in total that I know about, but it’s the principle of the thing.

I was given a phone number to contact their fraud line also. Quite why I’d want to do that wasn’t clear unless that’s their route into me pursuing it further?

If the hotel card thief then gave or sold the card to another there is likely little comeback for the hotel thief. So I wouldn’t expect a slam dunk.

And if there’s no easily obtainable CCTV, or what CCTV there is is unclear, then it’s also likely to end well for the thief.

My experience is that unless there is conclusive evidence on a plate, the Police won’t proceed.

Quite annoying…

Do you have any evidence that the card was left in the room versus, say, being dropped on the way out?

I thought I did. However, I now have cause to doubt that.

Hmm. Arse.

Do you have any evidence that the card was left in the room versus, say, being dropped on the way out?

good thinking.

Poor maid could be innocent.

I folded my card into the little paper slip you get with your room number on it, and the reason I believed I’d left it behind was because I left that slip on the desk thinking I didn’t need it any more forgetting my card was inside it. I was convinced that this was the only way I could have lost it.

Except, I’ve just found that slip, so now I don’t know. I’ve sent a follow-up email to the hotel to backtrack.

… in which case, I doubt that the police are going to give a toss about reviewing CCTV footage for such a small amount of money. So I guess all I can do is deal with the bank to get my money back.

had best part of £1800 ripped from our account, bank repaid it all eventually. It started just after I bought fuel at a petrol station, so in my mind they were at fault told bank and police nothing was ever done about it.

You left it in Leeds but then used it in Wetherby?

Do you have your card on your phone too?

Is that fraud or simply theft?

You left it in Leeds but then used it in Wetherby?

Do you have your card on your phone too?

Google Pay. I didn’t use the physical plastic card itself in Wetherby, rather the card is stored in GP.

The last time my card got done (at a petrol station) somebody ordered Sky using it. If that isn’t traceable I don’t know what is. Got my money back quickly but nothing else was done…

Police won’t do anything, unless the bank(s) have a load of information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of a fraud ring. It was back when Brown was either PM or Chancellor that the onus was offloaded from the police to the banks to handle card fraud.

All they’ll do is send a form and you have to declare which are genuine and which are fraudulent, noting that it is fraud to declare your genuine purchases as fraudulent. Then they refund the lot.

My card was brand new, used once via paypal and again to book a hotel room online, and got done for something like 42 purchases at an online shoe shop, and more flights than I take in a year. If that’s not traceable, I don’t know what is. The crooks would not be turning up to checkin, and probably would never be busted. The 100+ fraudulent purchases didn’t even appear on the statement.

This is why I’ve grown to dislike cash and physical cards over the last 2 years. In the past I’ve put money/card into my pocket only for it to disappear when I’ve taken something else out – thankfully the card I lost was my Revolut one so I just cancelled it and got another.

I now try to do everything on my [Google Pay] phone which is way safer for me and I stick £20 in notes in the phone case. The only small fly in the ointment is the potential limit on what you can pay by phone but that seems to be getting better.
If I know I’m making a bigger purchase I’ll take my physical card just in case.

The other odd thing about Apple pay is that if you try to return something, the card number that shows up on your receipt is different to the card number on the physical card. When I tried to get a refund last week I had to scroll through my phone transactions to prove I purchased item before they would refund.

In the days before chip & pin we stupidly allowed a waiter at an Indian restaurant in Holcombe Brook, Bury, to take our card away. They skimmed it and made a copy in the name of Mrs Baig, who went on the rampage over three days leading up to Christmas. We knew nothing until we discovered that our account was £1700 down. We printed off the statement, which pretty much gave the Police an itinerary of the woman’s movements and timings, so all they had to do was go and view some CCTV. Their response? Not interested. The bank refunded it all within a couple of days.

@Cougar
Don’t drive yourself mad….
Got a load ripped off from my current account with card fraud… my next priority was finding out what information the fraudsters had about me or used…they refused to discuss (including me going into my own branch) and I was basically told its money back or not… apparently asking what information they had/used is making yourself awkward…

This is nothing new. Back in the 1980s and 1990s I used to take reports of card fraud reported to the police in Glasgow. The procedure was – get a statement from the victim and a copy of their bank/credit card statements. Send to HQ. Once there 99% were filed with no further action. Now and then the fraud dept at HQ would join some dots and send a package back to local CID to deal with.

Why? Logistics and Priorities. Most crime investigation is local. So the housebreakings with dozens in a fairly local are would both get a higher priority and be easier to deal with. To get a case to court requires witness interviews and statements. Often follow up interviews when more info comes in. This is far easier when a couple of detectives can do the majority of work themselves. Card fraud by it’s nature involves crimes committed in different areas, Often different forces. Arranging for other people to carry out interviews and seize evidence for you etc involves more paperwork and bureaucracy. If the suspect or some of the frauds are in differentrs countries time to investigate multiplies.

The banks weren’t always helpful. For small amounts of money it is more cost effective for them to meet the losses than use staff time helping the police and getting involved in court cases.

Court time. I knew a DC that spent a lot time putting a case together for dozens of card frauds mainly in Ayrshire. Dropped by the Procurator Fiscal despite strong evidence. Running a case with dozens of witnesses would take a few days of court time. Other things like violence, domestics etc got higher priority. I should say that I’m long away from that job so perhaps things may have improved as far as getting evidence agreed rather than every witness needing to give evidence in a contested case.

Court time was why back then it was pretty much an unwritten rule in Glasgow that it was a waste of time reporting careless driving cases to the PF unless there was an injury. Even then many got dropped.

Unfortunately unless it’s literally into the millions the police tend not to have the resources.

If there was CCTV identifying someone they might go for it, but they have limited resources and far bigger fish to fry 🙁

Cheers all.

apparently asking what information they had/used is making yourself awkward…

“Do to data protection laws we cannot divulge personal information about, erm, yourself…”

“Do to data protection laws we cannot divulge personal information about, erm, yourself…”

More evasive that straight out saying so…. more of a “we will refund the money if you agree not to pursue this … if you wish to peruse this then we will not refund the money immediately and make every step as difficult as we can”

I was more pissed off initially as what I really wanted to know was how to protect myself from any further fraud based on what information had been compromised. Retrospectively it may have been their system was so flawed it didn’t require any???