Category: 
Saturday, 19 January 2008 @ 12:34 pm (Chris Frost)Over the past few days, I have been receiving the odd email from people asking me to stop taking money out of their bank accounts. I initially put it down to spam, however now I am being contacted via my Contact form. One person whom I’m now in email conversation with, have willingly provided me with their phone number which makes me think this is legitimate and is a bit worrying!
The initial email I got is quote below;
I don’t know how you have my details I have never subscribed to you but have now asked to be unsubscribed. Why have you taken 2 payments of £8.00 from my bank account? I do not want anything you are selling please stop as I have already informed my bank to refuse any further payments
I have informed them that I dont sell anything, have never requested or received any bank details and that the website in question, Shopping Discount, does’t charge users for access to the site.
When you create bill payments online, I know its extremely easy to make anything show up on your statement. I could in theory transfer £100 to my folks, yet have my statement show “Mr Gordon Brown” so I suspect something like this has happened. I have in the meantime asked the visitor to report this to their fraud department to investigate as a matter of urgency and have told them that Shopping Discount is owned by ColdSnail Ltd and to pass this information on to their bank too.
Bit worrying that someone somwehere is fraudulenty taking money from peoples bank accounts, yet on their statements its showing my website as being the receiver of the money!
Anyone else had this happen to them or have any advice?
1 person has left a comment
All sounds a bit fishy. And a bit worrying for both you and the people who contacted you.
Does it actually show on their statements with your domain name or is it just ‘Shopping Discount’? Are these going out as direct debits or as standing order payments? Direct Debits are usually fairly well policed by the banks. Either way, it shouldn’t take long for the banks to see that it’s not your account the money’s being paid into.