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On 1 Jan, 01:44, Appin wrote:
The message
from Bill contains these words:

Joe public are a strange breed, in a previous life my wife's daughter
lost the key to the padlock that was holding her bike secure in the
middle of Bedford. I went down with a small anvil, hammer and chisel, a
couple of minutes later the lock was off and the bike gone. Centre of
town on a Saturday, no one batted an eyelid.

Why am I not surprised?

Last May some swine living at 7 Hardwick Road in Bedford ordered a
bicycle on the internet quoting my name and the number of one of my
credit cards.
Somewhat surprisingly, the bicycle retailer sent the bicycle to that
address without any checks.

Phoned Bedford's "finest" where a female grunt told me in no uncertain
terms that the Bedford Police couldn't care less and wouldn't even take
details.

Lessons to be learned

1. *Bedford is a good place to steal bicycles -- the police are ready to
state officially that they aren't interested

2. *Do not use a Citicard of any description -- months of talking to
personages in an Indian call centre have achieved absolutely nothing but
promises to talk to "the *concerned department" -- to which I respond
that the problem is that the department is not concerned.

You should have requested chargeback from the CC.

Which of course I did. But remember that dealing with small persons in
an Indidan Call Centre where most of them have only a limmited command
of INDIAN English which is NOT the same in its grammar, syntax or use of
tenses is not an easy exercise, especially as they seem to specialise in
not listening to what's said to them. The few who seem to understand
pass it on to someone else who doesn't. I can't get it into their
heads that there were two fraudultent transactions on the same day. It
took me less than an hour to track down exactly who had got what from
whom and to where the bicycle had been delivered. But Citicard are
refusing to treat it as a chargeback, in spite of the fact that the card
never left my possession and the retailer delivered goods to an address
other than that of the cardholder without any check being made. Even
the "invoice address" given to the retailer (who did not send an invoice
to that address) was not the precise address held by the card company,
although the postcode was correct and a letter would have arrived.

If no success take them to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This can
cost the CC Co ~300 ukpds even if you lose. This means they will
almost certainly do something.

Sadly, I doubt if they'll do anything. I have already spoken to Trading
Standards and to the Financial Ombudsman service who have already
written to Citicard, to no obvious avail. Hardly surprising, as
Citicard have already failed to respond to (or even acknowledge) two
recorded delivery letters sent as far back as November. I will, of
course, contact the Financial Ombudsman service as soon as the statutory
time limit for action by Citicard has expired.

It is probably simple but almost total incompetence on the part of
Citicard, but lying seems to be the order of the day there. Not one of
the countless promises of calls back has ever materialised. Needless
to say I have ensured that calls were made to real geographical numbers
(thanks to www.saynoto0870.com) so have cost me nothing, and have also
ensured that I obtain the (alleged) names of those to whom I have been
speaking, together with the times of calls and the content of the
conversation.

However, bearing in mind that the card was branded Shell, I find the
response of Shell to repeated calls to be absolutely incredibly
unhelpful, bearing in mind the damage to THEIR reputation. After all,
THEY chose to remove the card contract from the Royal Bank of Scotland
and award it to Citicard. And just to make matters more complicated
there's a second issue in that the rebate supposedly paid on purchase on
the card is NOT being paid because Citicard don't recognise the list of
Shell stations in GB at which purchases of Shell petrol validate payment
of the rebate. They may speak English at the various Shell call
centres, but they're no more use than Citcard's Indian call centre.
Basically it's a case of "Not on our list of things we have an answer to
-- go away and pester someone else!"

Hence my advice

* Steer clear of Citicard

* Steer clear of Shell



I believe it is now official that CC fraud is practically out of hands
of the police and in the hands of the banks. There is concern that
this is bad thing because lots of CC crime is related to other crime.
However, even before this change the police probably wouldn't give a
toss.

What was a little surpising in this case was that there were meaningful
details of delivery address. Quite clearly it was most unlikely that
the culprits were living there under my name, but it would have been at
least relevant to nose around and it would also have been relevant to
consider the fact that the other transaction was a London Congestion
Charge. A close look at the vehicles owned by the current denizens of
the said address might at least put the wind up them.

In any case, my opinion of the grunts was already very low, so it's
questionable whether it could drop much further.