Following a recent trip to Vietnam I have received a credit card statement from Barclaycard for £4,225. This amount was for goods I purchased after the airline lost my luggage: two T-shirts and a pair of shorts, and was in August on the first day of my holiday.
The actual value of these items was £42, but the transaction was carried out in Vietnamese dong – 138,000,000 was charged instead of 1,380,000, which in effect is 100 times the cost.
I have never used the card for this amount of credit and certainly would not do so while in a foreign country.
After much discussion, Barclaycard told me it cannot help because I entered the pin and did not keep the receipt. I suggested that this was an obvious mistake, or indeed fraud. I had not used the card for a number of years and this transaction was in a foreign country. I now have to wait 60 days to see if the Vietnamese bank will respond. I have the name, address and phone number of the shop in Hanoi.
I have held the card for 21 years and have had no previous problems. As a retired teacher on a pension I feel completely let down by Barclaycard. Do you have any help or advice?
TT, Bristol
This was either an honest mistake by the store worker or a deliberate act of fraud – in either case, Barclaycard should have been more helpful.
One of the perils of visiting countries with weak currencies is that it is easy to lose track of what you should be paying. After a long flight it can be hard to work out the true amount when faced with lots of zeros.
Following our intervention, Barclaycard is at least taking the matter more seriously. It said: “We are trying very hard to resolve this issue for TT and have made representations to the merchant’s processing bank with details of the case.
“We are waiting for their response and, at the same time, our fraud investigation team is also urgently looking into this issue. Pending the outcome, we have applied a temporary credit for the amount overcharged and have refunded all related interest charges.”
This should end the matter. In the meantime, the moral of the tale is to check till receipts before you input your pin (and keep the receipt) – something we accept is easier said than done.
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