I’ve Been Robbed
Last Thursday 14th August I drove to IKEA to buy a desk for our new LAMP Developer Damien Gaillard. I stopped outside the Nationwide’s hole in the wall to withdraw my customary few pence, but there was a queue, so I used the ATM outside the Abbey next door instead. I put in my card and punched in my PIN number. Nothing happened. The screen said “Welcome. Please insert your card.” A man with a foreign accent (there is no other in Green Lanes) came up behind me and said “Don’t put card in that machine. It not working.” Another man rushed up and said something broadly similar. I began to suspect a scam, so I stayed by the machine, which still had my card. But the screen was saying “Insert your Card”. There was no sign of my card being returned. I lingered by the machine irresolutely for a minute; the men had vanished (I think — I’m not at all observant) and a small and mildly hostile queue had gathered waiting to use the cash machine. “It doesn’t work!” I yelled at the uncomprehending line.
I went into the Abbey and told the counter staff their machine had swallowed my card. They could not have been less interested. “You’ll get it back in a few days,” they muttered laconically.”But I need the money now!” I protested. “It’s the fault of YOUR machine!” The manager appeared. I grabbed him and hauled him off to the Nationwide next door. I wasn’t particularly concerned for my card, because I assumed it was buried safely in the bowels of the Abbey’s ATM. Together with the Abbey’s manager, I explained my plight to the woman at the counter in the Nationwide. “I need to withdraw some money. Oh, and I’d better cancel my debit card so you can send me a new one.” After checking my ID she let me withdraw some cash and I signed a piece of paper cancelling my debit card.
Freshly recharged with cash, I went off and bought Damien’s desk. On Tuesday my replacement card arrived. Yesterday I used it to withdraw money. No problems.
Today I went on to the Nationwide on-line banking site to pay my credit card bill — my monthly visit — and discovered that on August 14th as well as the meagre amount I’d withdrawn over the counter, I’d been hosed down for £300.
THREE HUNDRED POUNDS. That may not be a lot to most people, but to a humble fotoLibrarian it’s a fortune. It’s the maximum you can withdraw in a day, and it also happened to be all I had in my account. I rang the Nationwide and they confirmed the money had been withdrawn from the Bank of Ireland, not the Abbey, but they didn’t (couldn’t?) tell me at what time or where?
How did the thieves get my card out of the Abbey machine? How did they capture my PIN number? Why were the Abbey staff so unconcerned? (though the manager did come with me to the Nationwide).
Why me?
And I’ve been struggling since November last year to get back £41.04 from O2 Carphone Warehouse. I’ve even resorted to writing to the MD Charles Dunstone, who simply ignores my letters, which is unforgivably rude for a man at the helm of a public company, and his ratbag of a company has appointed a debt collection agency to chase me, claiming that I owe THEM money for a monthly rental since January for a phone contract I cancelled the previous November. It is irritating beyond belief, and very very debilitating.
These little things really wear one down.
August 27th, 2008 at 09:49
I am writing from South Africa and this scam has been operating here for the past 3 centuries. Generally, a piece of aluminum foil is inserted into the machine to make your card stick. Sometimes a ” helpful person” comes to assist you and “manages” to get “your” card out of the machine and you move on to another machine. The card that was “removed” from the machine is in fact someone elses. In your case, someone was watching you insert your code and, once you were gone, removed your card from the machine and withdrew your money. Normally accounts are stripped of all available cash.
Go well.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:50
They’re so clever. Why hadn’t I thought of that? In the UK there’s a maximum daily withdrawal limit of £300, which was in fact all my available cash. Nationwide grilled me about my identity and how this had come to pass — they weren’t very friendly and sounded most suspicious of me — but yesterday they repaid all the money I’d had stolen. They didn’t let me know, mind you, it was just there in my account.
Obviously this was their insurance paying up, but it was an Abbey machine that swallowed my card. They should be held responsible.
And this morning our Technical Development Manager’s partner has had her card swallowed, this time by a Nationwide machine. We wait to hear if her clock’s been cleaned.
The limit of my criminality was putting ring pulls in parking meters in the 60s. Is there still a Statute of Limitations?