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Anonymous User
Not applicable

Unauthorized payments from unknown account

I or rather NOWtv have a weird problem which I now fear can only be resolved via legal action.

 

About 5 months ago my credit card was debited for £7.99 several times. After much chat with NOWtv, it turns out nobody can trace not just why this payment is being taken, but we don't know from which account it's being taken from - it's certainly not my account.

 

I asked my credit card company refunded those payments, I then asked them to exclude NOWtv from any further access to my card. Unable to facilitate this, their solution was to cancel credit card then issue a new one with a new number. Two months later, not only did NOWtv debit a further two payments from my card but increase the aamount to £8.99. So how did Nowtv obtain my new card number?

 

My credit card company said they needed to advice VISA not to pass on my info to Nowtv. Once again the cancelled my credit card and issued another, with another new number.

 

Why do I write today? Because I've just found NowTV have taken another £8.99 from that card too. I'm beyond wits end now.

 

I bought a NowTV season ticket in Sept - I paid £199 in full via my bank current account. That payment can be seen on my NOWtv account. Only that payment can be seen, it's the only service I've bought from NOWtv. I find it quite incredible that NowTV cannot trace these transactions - they don't know anything about them, they don't know what the £8.99 payment is for, and they don't now which account it's being paid to.

 

And to top it all off, NowTV ignored my requests to which address I should send legal documents.

 

It's nothing other than fraud. 

15 REPLIES 15
RoyB
Legend

@Anonymous User 

 

Did you ever have a box, or Stick, that you put in the trash without resetting first?

 

Did you ever have a different account from the one you have now?

 

If so, can you remember the details?

 

I doubt that you can serve legal documents on NowTV over this (except as below), and I very much doubt that it is fraud by NowTV, as this would not be a good business model for them.

 

Though fraud, by a third party, may very well be involved; if I had a box that you once owned, on a different NowTV account from the one you use now, then I could buy passes, on your card, with impunity, every time I wanted to, though this would of course be theft.

 

Or if I had your card details from somewhere, perhaps leaked on, or hacked from, the web; if I knew the number, the expiry date, the CVC and your address, I could set up a brand new NowTV account, and as nothing ever has to come physically to your address, it would not matter that I actually lived somewhere else.

 

The card tracking thing is insidious; the idea is that when you get a new credit or debit card, VISA or MasterCard will let all the people who have a CPA (Continuous Payment Authority) running on the old card know the new number, so you don’t have to.

 

This operates even if a card is stopped (which I found useful when I lost my cards), but there is a loophole here that you ought to be able to specify that this notification not be sent for certain CPAs, as here, when you are trying to shake off rogue CPAs.

 

And it is a great pity that the Direct Debit safeguards were never extended to CPAs. But then that’s why companies like NowTV like them.

 

But to the substantive point; if NowTV are taking money from a bank account that you own, then they need to be able to demonstrate (even under the lax CPA rules) that the money is in fact owed.

 

And they ought to have to be able to demonstrate this to you, as the card owner, even if you have lost track of, or never knew, the NowTV account involved. But I don’t know if they do....

 

But it beggars belief that NowTV can’t find out why a certain payment was requested, when you can give date, amount and card number, and that they can’t find out on what account it was requested. And with due safeguards, shut down that account.

 

(You can, for yourself, on a NowTV account whose details you know and which is being used by someone else, change the password, force a logout of every user, and thus stop the rogue user being able to get back in. But your scenario is different from this, so NowTV have to do it.)

 

What NowTV desperately, desperately needs here, and not just for you, is to operate a blanket shutdown request, where you can say ‘Please shut down every NowTV account using card xxx, except for account yyy’, in cases where you can prove you own card xxx.

 

That would stop so many of the issues we get reported here, though yours is one of the worst.

 

NowTV might well need to do some programming on their systems to provide this, maybe have to add an index by card number, but the information required must be in their systems, even if it is not currently easily accessible.

Set a Payment PIN on your account so that no-one but you can buy memberships on it. Check your bank accounts monthly for any other unexpected payments to Now. That way you can at least nip them in the bud, while you and Now figure out whose fault they are.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

1: Yes I have had other accounts with NowTV and no, none of the payments are associated with them.

2: Nothing has ever been thrown in to the bin.

3: None of the above excuses NowTV from being unable to match the account from where monies are withdrawn to the TV account of the customer.

RoyB
Legend

@Anonymous User 

 

Agreed.

Set a Payment PIN on your account so that no-one but you can buy memberships on it. Check your bank accounts monthly for any other unexpected payments to Now. That way you can at least nip them in the bud, while you and Now figure out whose fault they are.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Having this exact same problem. Looks like someone set up a NowTV account with my compromised credit card, and then via the CPA process, can continue to make payments on my new card. To top it off, I’m unable to request that NowTV remove these details as the phone line is unavailable. Seems to be a pretty significant loop hole where people can get their hands on your replacement card details and continue to defraud you.

RoyB
Legend

@Anonymous User 

 

Yes, there’s a loophole. If you have a card, and it gets lost, stolen or cloned, and you cancel it with the bank, all your CPAs will be moved to the new card.

Normally, this is what you want. However if one of these CPAs is fraudulent, already set up on the old card from before, or set up after the card was compromised but before it was stopped, it will move to the new card.

 

This is why you should cancel ASAP, and also give the best date/time you can for when fraudulent activity might potentially have started.

 

But you can still tell the bank that the CPA is fraudulent, and they can stop it without stopping anything else on the card. Indeed, they must, by law, honour your request for that.

 

You should email customerservices @ nowtv.com (without the spaces) to tell them what is happening, so they don’t stop your card from paying for your legitimate account as it continues.

Set a Payment PIN on your account so that no-one but you can buy memberships on it. Check your bank accounts monthly for any other unexpected payments to Now. That way you can at least nip them in the bud, while you and Now figure out whose fault they are.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

You should email customerservices @ nowtv.com (without the spaces) to tell them what is happening, so they don’t stop your card from paying for your legitimate account as it continues.

 

In theory yes, but not in practice.  I gave NowTV the number but customer services ( who were pathetic by they way - I have months of correspondence with people who had no grasp of the problem ) couldn't find the card on their system.  That's the whole issue and why NowTV is a shambles of a company. They are taking payment from an account and a credit card that they cannot trace !

 

I put it to you NowTV must be able to trace this, whether they want to is a different matter. Excluding the problems I had of the bank not authorising the cancelation on to the new card, the bottom line is NowTV were found to be acting fraudulantly.

 

I hope nobody else has to go thru this.

PaulNormanUK
Scholar 3

This usually happens when someone creates multiple accounts in order to take advantage of various offers such as a free trial. They then get billed because they forgot to cancel the service before the trial ran out. A few months later they realise they are being billed for that service but cannot remember what email address they used to setup the account and so they shout out the word "FRAUD" hoping that this will make it all go away.

 

 

Anonymous User
Not applicable
I’m sure that usually Is the case. But in this instance it’s very much the
CPA process combined with identity theft. Horrible combination, but should
be able to solve through a CPA stop request and police. I suspect this is
probably something that is being exploited at present.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Not in this case it didn't. I've only ever had three email addresses in my entire life.

 

And besides, even if that were true are you suggesting the person who took out the free trial didn't cancel? If they didn't cancel and the transactions were legit, then any company should be able to simply match up the email address or account with the bank from where the money is being withdrawn. 

 

I've continually said that NowTV have no record of any email adress and no record whatsoever of the bank from where they're withdrawing money.

 

We're not just shouting FRAUD, it was fraud !   What's likely to have happened is someone has made a balls up and used my bank details against someone elses account.

 

Do you seriously believe a company has no idea why or where they're receiving money from?

 

The money was being obtained fraudulantly. Please do not suggest otherwise.