About 8.00am this morning we had a phone call. When I looked at the phone it was an 0333 number, almost always a scam so I answered and immediately rang off.
Around lunchtime the same number rang again, so answered the phone but said nothing and listened. A recorded announcement said it was XYZ Bank (with whom we have a credit card) for Mr A B Smith. (DH's pseudonym). Please would he press any key and hache.
I immediately rang off completely convinced it was a scam. But then I remembered that I had been using the family XYZ bank card the previous night to pay some repetitive amounts of money to different organisations. So I mentioned it to DH and encouraged him to ring the number on the back of his credit card and enquire.
1hour later, after long waits, suspicious staff demanding all kinds of verfication DH could not remember, it turned out that my activities last night had raised suspicions and led to a fraud stop being put on the account. Once I had spoken to them and given them the number on my card on this account, everything was sorted.
But I think the method used to contact us was really not satisfactory, it was so like scam call
A better idea would have been a personal call, asking us to ring the number on our credit card on a different phone and possibly a code or password to give to the operator the other end. It would at least be clear it was likelyto be the real thing and not a scam. And I would have not come so close to just ignoring the calls, until I went to use the card and it was rejected, whcih could cause problems.
Good Morning Good Friday 29th March 2024