Last week I logged onto my internet banking, like I do daily, to check balances as I had to pay for car repairs. I got a shock when I saw my credit card was $500 over its limit. Thre was a transaction for $1300 which should have been only a deposit of $100 for a course my daughter is doing. I made her ring the company straight away to fix it. Took 4 days for it all to sort out but left me with no money to buy food for my poor undernourished son. On the plus side the company had already sent the books out for the course, which they don't send till the whole thing is paid for.
Check your withdrawals. If there's ANY discrepancy - even if it's something that you don't remember but might have done - PHONE. YOUR. BANK.
I work for a bank, we won't bite your head off just for checking. I get people doing it all the time. Most of the time you tell people the transactions and they realise they forgot to account for something.
"Some companies take out money as a test to see if you have the money in your bank, and then return it."
They shouldn't do this. I have recently seen companys deposit a small sum (20cents or something) to confirm you have given the right account details before starting a direct debit. I guess this saves them time and money when debits get dishonoured because the wrong details have been given.
Don't just check your statement monthly - check it daily. Make sure all withdrawals are consistent with your spending. Query ANYTHING which isn't - Barclays are quite good with fraud (as in they're good when you suffer it, not that they're good at doing it) and will understand and help. Though they're rubbish at detecting it. If this company is taking money without providing a product, confirm that this isn't permitted by any agreement you've signed and get the bank to cancel the transfer - don't "borrow to make the bank happy". Whoever this company are, they are TAKING YOUR MONEY without your consent and putting you into difficulties.
As a follow-up, just because you can't detect a virus/worm/Trojan on your system doesn't mean there isn't one. But that doesn't appear to be the problem here.
Like Famine said, check balances daily, especially if you buy things over the internet or have direct debits coming out. I don't know how many people I see who overdraw their accounts because they forgot a payment was coming out and then they get charged a fee and expect us to refund it. It's your bank account and your responsibilty to keep track of what you do and at the same time keep track of transactions you don't do.
Debit cards << Credit Cards.
A debit card takes the cash out of your bank account, at which point in time you no longer have it in your possession and you stop earning interest on it. Credit cards pay the transaction for you and bill you at a later date. That way, you continue to earn interest on the money in the interim, and you are still in possession of the cash. So by the time you get around to disputing the price, you're still not playing with your money, but instead, the credit card company's money.
I had a man the other day wanting a debit card, our bank seems to be the only one in Australia that doesn't have them. He thought it would be safer for using over the internet. Had to tell him this wasn't the case. There are just as much risks from either account but difference is whether it's your money or the banks money that gets stolen.
It's a lot harder for you to get a private party to put the cash BACK in your account than it is for you to get the credit card company to take their money back.
That being said, it's also a lot easier for a bank to stop a direct debit coming from a bank account than it is from a credit card. Of course I am talking about in Australia, not sure of the rest of the world. We can put a direct entry stop on a bank account, with a credit card we have to wait til the transaction hits the account and then dispute the transaction plsu you have to cancel the debit with the company which is sometimes quite hard when they never answer their phones.
To keep you're money safe:
- Never give out PIN numbers or passwords, even to partners, family members or best friends. You share them then the bank won't take responsibilty for any missing money even it was taken by someone else.
- Never click on links in emails from banks saying that you need to update your details. Guaranteed it won't be from your bank and you'll only be giving your details to someone who wants to steal your money. Always access your internet banking directly from the banks site by typing it in the address bar or having it saved in your favourites.
- Never let you're credit card out of your sight. And if the company uses the real old fashioned imprinter to record your transaction make sure the carbon paper is torn into little bits.
- If you travel to Asia or Malaysia cancel your credit card as soon as you get back home. There are a lot of skimming devices in use there and the risk of money going missing increases significantly.
- If you have to set secret security questions make them questions that no one could possibly know the answer to. Things like 'mothers maiden name' 'first pets name' are questions that family and friends would know and a lot of the time money stolen from a bank account is done by someone you know.
- If you do a lot of internet purchases consider getting a separate credit card with a smaller limit that you use only for the internet. This way if it gets compromised you can cancel it and your main credit card that you use for your daily transactions remains usable. Nothing worse than having to cancel a credit card and not being able to transact until a new one is issued.
TVR&Ferrari_Fan I'm glad you sorted your problem out. If the money was taken out of your account before it was supposed to have happened and you got charged any bank fees because of it then make sure you let the comapny know and make them deduct it from your purchase price.
At 6% interest/year (assuming I invest that $500), that returns $30/year. If I average $1000/month in purchases and get 1.5% cashback on the card, I get another $180/year. Now, in point of fact, I probably average significantly higher than $1000/month because I buy expensive stuff on occasion (like a television or a couch). These things give me way more cash back, but assuming that I didn't buy those things, the credit card company is paying me $210/year, or, $18/month for the convenience of using a credit card. That covers a monthly bill, like netflix, or almost a year of GTpremium every month.
I don't know if this is done in other countries but consider paying all your wages into your mortgage and using your credit card for all your purchases. At the end of the month you pay your credit card bill from your mortgage. That $500 saved off your mortgage interest each month can amount to years off your mortgage, which can be significantly more then the interest you'd make in a savings account.
And you'll see the lost interest amount blossom from $0.002 to $0.45!
Thats $0.448 is better in your pocket than the banks. Oh wait..... on second thoughts that's what pays my wages.
Are you speaking from experience?
