VS Amex cloning

It looks as if MR DLs VS Amex may have been cloned. A (very) large transaction has appeared on his on-line account as pending from the Cafe Lux at The Venetian in Vegas.He's rung MBNA who have been worse than useless - they've told him to take it up with Cafe Lux (and their disputes dept work Mon- Fri 9-5 so they can't be contacted at present). I am outraged - is there anything else we can do before Monday?
thanks
DL

[Nottingham Nick]

Make sure you make a note of all the phone calls you made and who you spoke to.

Touch wood, I haven't had this problem for a while, but on the two occasions I did have a problem, I found the MBNA fraud section to be excellent.

I don't know what number you rang, but the number I have for the fraud dept. is 0800 116262.

Nick

Thanks Nick.That was the number given to him (along with the 'they don't work weekends' line).

I had a problem the other week when they suspended my card. I only found out (when another tranaction was refused) and phoned them they said they had sent me a letter and that the fraud dept was closed and only did normal hours ! This was a Thursday evening and the letter arrived the following Tuesday in the same post as the replacement card! They had both my email and phone numbers yet they thought a letter would work !

When I gor my new card they then queried a tranaction for 12.99 ignoring the 170 for national express. Not sure what their fraud prevention routines arte but they need looking at.

Saying that the fraud people were excellent when I did speak to them on the Friday morning.

To protect yourself further why not use the 'message' function in your account to send them details etc. They may not do anything about it but you will have additional evidence that you contacted them abut the problem.

Shouldn't the person you spoke to have at least suspended the fraudulent amount, pending investigation? We had a similar situation about 2 or 3 years ago - I checked himself's online account on a Saturday, saw the fraudulent amounts (and they were huge!), got straight on to MBNA - they did tell us to contact fraud on the Monday as they were closed at the weekends, but suspended the transaction.

I was in total shock (and never did find out how the number was cloned or even obtained) - but it sounds to me as though you've had very unsympathetic and rough handling...

My VS Amex got cloned and MBNA were pretty good. Certainly there were no issues with proving it wasn't me etc. In my case they'd spotted the fraud before me which perhaps helped though. Try another person on the phone I guess.

Agree with McMaddog - nad enough, having the card cloned, you don't need that kind of unsympathetic attitude on top of it!

[Scrooge]

I thought it was SOP that once a card is thought to be cloned the account get's locked down ?
If not, find another card, I know it's the VS Amex, but is just not acceptable to me.