Last October, while on holiday in Paris, I took a taxi with two friends, one of whom was on crutches as she had broken her knee.
The taxi appeared legitimate, with a green light indicating it was for hire. On the five-minute journey, the driver was initially chatty, and his English was good.
We arrived at our hotel and I handed him a €10 note for the €7.30 (£6.44) fare. He wouldn’t accept the note and insisted I pay by card as he ‘had taken too much cash that day’.
I went to tap my card on the machine, but he said I needed to use chip and PIN. I felt uneasy so checked my Sainsbury’s Bank account when I got to the hotel and found I’d been scammed out of €777.77 — or £685. Despite this, the bank won’t refund me. A.S., Chatham, Kent.
Taken for a ride: A Parisian taxi driver scammed British group out of €777 on a €7.30 fare after he refused to accept cash
Sally Hamilton replies: Zut alors! You were taken for a ride by this rogue Paris taxi driver. You tried your best to resist his brazen techniques, but you were too trusting, and he foiled you at every turn.
Fishy as it was that he refused cash for the fare in the first place (few taxi drivers I have encountered prefer card payments to coins and notes), you felt pressurised to make the card payment and worried what would happen if you didn’t do as he said.
I do sympathise that when you’re in a country where you don’t speak the language it can be tricky to negotiate.
When you told the driver you couldn’t see the charge on the screen because his machine was being held together with duct tape, he offered a blustering response, along with the excuse he couldn’t provide a receipt because the machine had run out of paper.
It all added up to old-fashioned, premeditated theft — as shameless as if he’d pinched your purse from your handbag.
The transaction on your card statement showed the name ‘Hotelextra Lyon’, which was suspicious for a taxi driver operating in a city almost 300 miles away from Lyon.
You complained quickly to Sainsbury’s Bank and froze your card. When the call centre opened on the Monday morning following the scam, the team told you not to worry and to complete a claim form for a chargeback.
Feeling reassured, you sent off the completed form. Many weeks passed and you heard nothing. You called again in January and were told the team would respond by the end of the month.
But then, the next day, you received a letter from the bank saying the disputed transaction was valid and that the bank would not be seeking a refund from the merchant. When you expressed your consternation, the bank offered you £25.
The payment terminal used by the scammer was supplied by SumUp, a popular international payment systems provider. You asked this company for help, too.
Sainsbury’s also contacted SumUp, but not until March. When I contacted SumUp on your behalf, it told me it endeavours to return funds to fraud victims but only if the money has not ‘exited our system’, which of course it had after nearly six months.
In fact, the cash was gone within 24 hours and the account involved was blocked in October. It said standard practice is for victims in cases like yours to initiate a chargeback, or a Section 75 claim with their bank, which you had done.
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 says a credit card provider is jointly responsible for any breach of contract or misrepresentation by a merchant, so long as the purchases made were over £100 and under £30,000.
Chargeback is similar, and though not enshrined in law, most banks have signed up to the scheme. It can be used if a disputed purchase was made on a debit card, or on a credit card for a sum under £100.
Either way, the banks will usually require evidence to pursue a claim successfully. Unfortunately, as your unfair fare had been discussed verbally with the driver and you did not have a receipt for your taxi journey to prove the charge did not match the money taken, you hit a roadblock.
I asked Sainsbury’s to reconsider its decision and refund you. I’m sorry to say that despite strenuous efforts, the bank refused.
The most it offered was to freeze the interest on the unwanted payment for two months to give you time to pay it off.
The bank said that because you had used your PIN, the rules mean it was unable to process a Section 75 or chargeback claim. A Sainsbury’s Bank spokesman says: ‘We take fraud very seriously and regularly invest in measures to protect our customers. Unfortunately, in this case, the customer has authorised and made an in-person payment using her chip and PIN, so we’re unable to process it as fraud.’
You have now contacted the Financial Ombudsman.
A key lesson from this inflated taxi fare fraud is for holidaymakers to remain sceptical if a cab driver makes life difficult when it comes to paying. Hard as it may feel, especially when abroad, it is essential to check the transaction amount and to request a receipt.
When a driver uses excuses such as ‘the machine’s broken’, this should raise red flags. If taken in by such a scam, try to take a photo of the taxi licence plate and report the incident to the police. This could be useful evidence if a fraud claim becomes necessary.
Sally sorted it: One year, £1.5m returned to readers
I’m pleased to say Sally Sorts It has won back almost £1.5 million for readers in a year.
Launched 12 months ago this week, I’ve battled firms and organisations that have let down customers with inferior service.
With the cost of living crisis engulfing all households it has become more important than ever to get money that is owed — whether for faulty goods, unfairly denied insurance claims or funds stolen by fraudsters — back.
The total recouped includes money reimbursed, tracked down, paid out and written off as well as sums offered in compensation for poor customer service.
Notable wins include the man who suffered a cardiac arrest but initially had his critical illness insurance claim denied because policy wording said it was not a ‘heart attack’. The insurer, Royal London, agreed to pay him the full £244,000.
John Lewis doubled a home insurance payout to nearly £20,000 after a customer’s Mercedes burst into flames on her front drive, causing extensive damage to her property.
Keep writing in — and I’ll keep investigating and working hard to sort your problems.
Bingo firm wants £1,450 but I thought game were free
I occasionally gamble on bingo websites and did so recently, paying £30 to one called Broadway Gaming.
I didn’t win but continued to play on what I thought was ‘play for fun’ games, involving no charge.
When I checked my HSBC bank account on the Monday, to my horror, I saw ‘pending’ transactions of about £1,450 payable to the site. The bank said I had authorised the payments.
I emailed Broadway Gaming and was awaiting a reply when I saw that the ‘pending’ transactions had disappeared from my account.
I rang HSBC to be told the payments had been declined by the gaming company and was told categorically this meant it was not possible for it to take the payments in future.
I assumed the site accepted my error in thinking I was playing for free. But on checking my account, the money had been taken.
Anon.
Sally Hamilton replies: You told me you were initially so thankful the payments had not gone through you donated £725 —half the sum involved — to the relief effort following the Pakistan floods. But when the betting firm took your money after all, you realised your luck had changed and it left you in a nasty financial hole.
Although you were naïve in assuming the extra bets were free — you later checked that this firm does not offer such ‘play for fun’ options — you said it was an easy assumption to make, as other sites do. However, this wasn’t really the point, and you don’t blame the site for what happened.
You had been given several reassurances in your call to HSBC that the payments would not be taken and had made a sizeable charitable donation on this basis.
I asked HSBC to investigate, and it agreed you had been misinformed on your call. It has refunded you £725 to cover your charity gift, donated a further £100 to the same charity and awarded you £100 as an apology. You have passed this latter sum on to Oxfam as a thank you for my involvement.
On your request, the bank has put a gambling block on your debit card. It has also retrained the employee involved.
An HSBC spokesman says: ‘Our customers are our absolute priority and we are sorry that, due to human error, anon was not provided with accurate information on some payments that were pending on his account.
‘We have apologised to him and taken action to put things right.’
Your case should serve as a warning to would-be gamblers to check the rules of any game before handing over debit card details.
Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.
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