card fraud customer service system complaint

Irish Steve

I received a text and later an E-mail this evening regarding suspicious activity on my account. I suppose I should be thankful that the system has flagged some transactions as suspicious before they have even been completely processed, and that there are procedures in place to contact customers in such cases, but my experience of dealing with this has transformed my satisfaction into frustration. 


I eventually got through to an operator to speak about this after about 15 minutes on hold, and having confirmed that there were problems with fraudulent transactions, we were about to discuss the matter further when your system cut off the call. That was over 40 minutes ago, and I have since been on hold and cut off 3 times without getting through to an operator.

Appallingly bad customer service does not even come close. apologising for the delay with two different messages every 10 seconds is no help, with every passing minute, my blood pressure is rising, as not only is this stressful, I suspect that I will not be able to get any information about how this has happened in order to try and prevent a recurrence, and the account concerned is not heavily used.

I eventually managed to get through a second time after about 45 minutes, and through no fault of mine that I am aware of, I now can't use my debit card, and I will have to wait for my money to be returned to the account. 

Several other things in passing. The text I received says, (and rightly so) if you have any concerns about replying to this number, call us on the number on the back of the card.  That's easier said than done, my eyesight is still relatively good, I don't normally need to use reading glasses, but I was completely unable to read the numbers on the back of the card, the first problem is that the font size used is microscopic, the second problem is that the numbers are white on purple, and the third is that with the way the card details are embossed, the numbers are distorted by the embossing. Fortunately, I was at home, with access to my laptop, so I was able to log on to the on line banking system to get the appropriate contact number, albeit that the delays on that number were significant, and made worse by the technical faults that caused the line to drop the call a number of times without making any connection to the operators.

An hour and 20 minutes after the text arrived, I can do no more tonight, other than wonder how my card details have been compromised so comprehensively, given that I am very careful with how the card is used, where it is stored, and the on line sites it is used on. In addition, my computers are scanned regularly for inappropriate software or related intrusions, so I can be reasonably confident that the card was not compromised by a simple phishing scam or similar.

Hopefully, the relevant fraud departments will be able to analyse in a lot more detail what's been going on, and find out where they were skimmed from, it shouldn't be that hard, it was a relatively new card, and not used much since it was issued.

Let me summarise. I have no complaints with the way in which the people I spoke with dealt with the problem, and yes, I am happy that there are processes in place to detect fraudulent transactions very early in the processing cycle. My complaint is with the call management systems that are in place to queue the calls, and the inordinate delays in getting through to a real person. 

Both of these issues are absolutely down to management decisions, and it would seem that there are severe problems with the reliability of the technology being used, and the number of staff deployed to deal with time critical and sensitive matters. Hopefully, at some stage, my comments will be fed through to the relevant management. 

Best regards

Steve

Bank of Ireland: Tara

Hi Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to post.

I'm sorry to hear you've had fraud on your account and of the poor experience when trying to get in touch. When a customer's card has been compromised it must be cancelled and reissued, to avoid further unauthorised transactions being made. Apologies if this was not explained to you when you spoke to our colleagues.

Due to the nature of fraud investigations we cannot divulge where a card was compromised, as it may interfere with on-going queries. It’s our experience that the place where a card has been compromised is also the victim of skimming/hacking and the company usually take steps to ensure that it does not happen to them again when it is reported to them.

As always, we will ensure to forward your feedback to the appropriate areas. If you wish to raise a formal complaint, please see our complaints process here

When you have the opportunity you can also refer to our website here for tips on card security.

Kind regards
Tara O