Barclay credit card company impressed me today.
I am actually quite new customer with Barclay as I ended up with them via my old Morgan Stanley card. Barclay took over Goldfish who took over Morgan Stanley credit cards. I am a firm believer in having credit card that gives me cash back. Amex Blue is another card that I have used since 2001.
Today has been an admin day where I changed over my credit card details with Superline and also signed up for Bethere as BT finally has sorted out my phone line.
Only a few hours later I got this automated call from Barclay asking me to confirm 3 outstanding transactions but before I could hear I had verify some personal information. The voice listed 3 charges and one was something that I didn’t expected so when the option to talk to someone in Fraud dept came up I choose that.
I had to answer a few security questions and after that we could discuss the charges. Superline had put through a charge of £10 and that is unexpected to me as they deduct the money after the invoice has been raised. This is the first in many years that I have had any payment issue with them and I have already sent them an email asking for my money back.
Update: Superline wrote back and said “The only way for us to validate that a payment card is valid is to apply a ‘test’ transaction to that account.To achieve this, we apply what is known as a ‘Pre-Authorisation’ charge of £10.00 against the account. This is not an actual charge against the account and unless that transaction were confirmed by us, no money will ever leave your account.” All good!
Barclay’s Fraud dept said that there is a lot of online fraud going on now and that is why they put a block on my card. It is so important to regular check you debit + credit card statements. My set-up is the the following and this something that works very well for me and perhaps you help you too.
I have online statements rather then paper statements for several reasons;
1. When you are opening your mail coming home from work or the pub you are most likely not be in the right frame of mind to review it properly. You are hungry, want to hang out with your friends or your significant other. You are mostly likely to put that statement away and only pick it up when it is time to pay the bill.
2. When you review your online statement it is because you decided to do so and is more likely to pick up any odd charges. If you think ‘ah I will never get around doing that’, set a reminder in your online calender to email you. Every second Sunday for a 30 minute slot and then hit re-occurring.
3. You can also check your recent transactions rather then to wait for the statement to be issued. That keeps a good tab of your current spending.
4. Storage. The company stores it for you and you do not have in the draw. It is too much in there already, isn’t it? And how often do you really go back and check that draw?
5. It saves the credit card company money and in a perfect world, maybe some of that savings get passed on to you. Just maybe.
Since there is a high volume of online fraud going on at the moment – please check your accounts to make sure it is only your charges going through.
read comments (0)