Well, it had to happen eventually given the pace at which this crime is growing.
I’ll keep a running commentary here for my own records as much as anything else.
Here’s what’s happened so far:
- My Barclaycard Visa bill arrived this morning.
- I almost choked on my breakfast when I saw an charge O2 for £1,027.31; my iPhone bill should be £45.
- I assumed that it was a mistake at O2, who had a lot of trouble moving from my old O2 account to the new iPhone one (not a surprise given my previous post on the matter).
- I phoned O2 who, on the first call, handled it badly, telling me that they could not see such a transaction on my account and that I needed to phone up Barclaycard and get a ‘GED’ number for the transaction.
- I phoned up Barclaycard who told me that only a merchant could request such a number.
- While I was on the phone to Barclaycard, I noticed another two Paypal payments that I did not recognise…..the penny was starting to drop.
- I asked Barclaycard to put a stop on the account and send out a form for me to challenge the transactions.
That’s where we are at the moment. I don’t really regard it as identity theft at the moment, much more likely just plain old credit card fraud….but let’s run with it and see what happens.
