Why? Because when I read the text alert and saw I was over £200 in the red when I should have been in the black (okay maybe by not that much, as it’s another week ’til payday) I knew something was wrong. Being at the laptop at the time I nipped onto the bank’s site and logged into online banking, and there it was, an entry for £206.63 paid to Aer Lingus! Now quite apart from the fact that the furthest I’ve travelled in recent weeks is into the neighbouring county of Yorkshire (which although a strange foreign land, was not, the last time I looked, “abroad”), I have never travelled with Aer Lingus, and I’m not planning on doing so any time soon. Something was amiss.

Now having had my bank card cloned twice in the past, I knew that the quickest way to get the whole mess straightened out was to head straight down to the branch. Getting through to the bank’s fraud team usually involves at least a 10-15 minute wait in one of those infernal queuing systems with some nauseatingly irritating woman telling you they are aware of your call and your call is important to them. Yeah, right! So off down to the branch I headed.

What did I find when I got there? Well the assistant was very helpful, and did promptly deal with my enquiry and look into my account details, and get straight onto the bank’s fraud team (they’ve got a direct line through to them, unlike us mere mortals who have wait in the queue). I know from previous experience that the banks are usually very helpful in these matters, and after sending me a form out to sign to declare the dodgy transaction(s) were indeed not transacted by me, quickly refunded my account (they bear the loss and do all the necessary investigating), but the whole hassle of having to sort it out, having your card stopped, waiting for a replacement card to arrive, not to mention the emotional impact of it all, is no small matter.

Fortunately, on this occasion it’s not my current card that’s the problem, and therefore my card’s not been stopped, but it’s my previous card, the one that got stopped after it was cloned last summer that’s been used to make a payment. How? Apparently when a card gets reported to a bank as possibly been having used fraudulently, a tag gets put on the card of “stolen”. Here’s the crazy part though. Companies can over-ride the “stolen” warning, and still accept the card for payments!

The bank’s fraud team has now updated that old card’s status to “fraudulent use”, so companies will no longer be able to accept it for payment, but the whole thing just strikes me as crazy. How can a company or a retailer still accept a card for payment, knowing it’s possibly been stolen? On this occasion the good news was that my current card’s okay, but I still had a hell of a stressful day sorting it all out, and “wasted” hours getting it all sorted out when I should have been working. They haven’t heard the last about this, and neither have Aer Lingus, as I’m intending to contact them to ask them just what their policies are on accepting possibly stolen cards for payments. I’m sure their response will make great reading.