Late last night we did our usual 2 day check of our Travel Cards and found that nearly $5000 had been taken fraudulently with a mixture of British pounds and Aussie dollars. The expenditure had been with Whirlpool/Maytag, Miele and websites named Redtel.co.uk and Tackle.co.uk. It looked as though a couple of test transaction for small amounts had been put through to Bigfishgames.
We rang the ANZ bank and they looked at their records and said that one of the transactions appeared to be in Australia which is odd because we have never used the cards there.
They cancelled the card which probably saved another $2000 + £91 which was the remainder of the money in the account.
Mick thinks the card could have been cloned as there are plenty of crooks around who have the expertise to do that according to some news items or alternatively, one of the places where we have used it recently could have taken the card number and the 3 digit card security code and made fraudulent online purchases.
Although the cards are chip enabled, the problem is that the PIN does not work with EFTPOS in stores here, so we have to sign for goods. (It does work in ATM's though - go figure). We then have to turn the card over to show the merchant the signature so that they can compare the two signatures. This exposes the 3 digit card security number to them. Very poor design.
In view of the above, today we covered the security codes of our remaining 3 cards with a small sticker so that it is not visible just in case that is what happened.
Anyway we filled a form in online and sent it off to the bank and didn't get to bed until 1am after all the stuffing around. Mick had to ring ANZ 3 times as the email address on the form he downloaded didn't work so he rang them again and the ANZ gave him another email address which also didn't work so he rang them yet again and they gave him a third email address that did.
We await the result.
Today with the forecast for much rain we had a lie in after the drama of the previous night and then got up and headed off down The Great Glen to Loch Ness to see if we could see the monster, Nessie.
The Great Glen is a series of glens running 100 kilometres from Inverness on the edge of Moray Firth, to Fort William at the head of Loch Linnhe, on the west coast of Scotland.
The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid which is is a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is not recognized by science. It's description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence has varied since it was first brought to the world's attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with minimal and much-disputed photographic material and sonar readings. Many of the photos supposedly of the monster have been found to be either fakes or mistaken identity ie logs or waves etc.
Mick thinks it had been a brilliant ploy to bring the tourists in and if so it is working brilliantly to this day. You just have to take a look at the gift shop and what the visitors are buying to see that.
The book Mick read whilst waiting for Lyn listed all of the attempts that were made to prove or disprove it's existence and made very interesting reading. I guess the jury is still out but one of the points made is that there would not be enough food for a thing or things of that size to survive in the Loch.
On the way it started belting down with rain and it looked like that was it for the day. "Never fear!", said Mick, this is Scotland and it will be sunny soon and it was. It didn't last long however and we had to dodge the showers as we stopped to take pictures of the Loch in various weather conditions.
We soon arrived at the Loch Ness restaurant, gift shop and exhibition centre and found it packed with tourist coaches with people from all over the world. We went into the see the audio visual display and the lady said sorry it's in Chinese for the next half hour due to the Chinese coach loads that had arrived. The Chinese love their myths and legends.
We spent ages in the gift shop as there was some very nice stuff in there and Lyn bought a few items whilst Mick read a book on the history of the Loch and it's monster. The tourist coach people bought up really big in the gift shop. We are not sure where most of them came from but there were a lot of European number plated coaches in the car park as well as the Wang Dynasty coach UK Pty Ltd.
We then left the gift shop and went to look at a lovely little town called Drumnadrochit. A cute little place but very touristy with people sitting out at cafes having a beer and lunch. We tried to buy ourselves a devonshire tea but all the restaurants were sold out. We thought we would get a toasted sandwich but at $8 each we passed and headed back to Inverness to see some more of the town.
There was a very good band playing in a plaza area and we watched for a while talking to a group of Aussies.
We then found somewhere to have dinner and called it a day.
We rang the ANZ bank and they looked at their records and said that one of the transactions appeared to be in Australia which is odd because we have never used the cards there.
They cancelled the card which probably saved another $2000 + £91 which was the remainder of the money in the account.
Mick thinks the card could have been cloned as there are plenty of crooks around who have the expertise to do that according to some news items or alternatively, one of the places where we have used it recently could have taken the card number and the 3 digit card security code and made fraudulent online purchases.
Although the cards are chip enabled, the problem is that the PIN does not work with EFTPOS in stores here, so we have to sign for goods. (It does work in ATM's though - go figure). We then have to turn the card over to show the merchant the signature so that they can compare the two signatures. This exposes the 3 digit card security number to them. Very poor design.
In view of the above, today we covered the security codes of our remaining 3 cards with a small sticker so that it is not visible just in case that is what happened.
Anyway we filled a form in online and sent it off to the bank and didn't get to bed until 1am after all the stuffing around. Mick had to ring ANZ 3 times as the email address on the form he downloaded didn't work so he rang them again and the ANZ gave him another email address which also didn't work so he rang them yet again and they gave him a third email address that did.
We await the result.
Today with the forecast for much rain we had a lie in after the drama of the previous night and then got up and headed off down The Great Glen to Loch Ness to see if we could see the monster, Nessie.
The Great Glen is a series of glens running 100 kilometres from Inverness on the edge of Moray Firth, to Fort William at the head of Loch Linnhe, on the west coast of Scotland.
The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid which is is a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is not recognized by science. It's description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence has varied since it was first brought to the world's attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with minimal and much-disputed photographic material and sonar readings. Many of the photos supposedly of the monster have been found to be either fakes or mistaken identity ie logs or waves etc.
Mick thinks it had been a brilliant ploy to bring the tourists in and if so it is working brilliantly to this day. You just have to take a look at the gift shop and what the visitors are buying to see that.
The book Mick read whilst waiting for Lyn listed all of the attempts that were made to prove or disprove it's existence and made very interesting reading. I guess the jury is still out but one of the points made is that there would not be enough food for a thing or things of that size to survive in the Loch.
On the way it started belting down with rain and it looked like that was it for the day. "Never fear!", said Mick, this is Scotland and it will be sunny soon and it was. It didn't last long however and we had to dodge the showers as we stopped to take pictures of the Loch in various weather conditions.
We soon arrived at the Loch Ness restaurant, gift shop and exhibition centre and found it packed with tourist coaches with people from all over the world. We went into the see the audio visual display and the lady said sorry it's in Chinese for the next half hour due to the Chinese coach loads that had arrived. The Chinese love their myths and legends.
We spent ages in the gift shop as there was some very nice stuff in there and Lyn bought a few items whilst Mick read a book on the history of the Loch and it's monster. The tourist coach people bought up really big in the gift shop. We are not sure where most of them came from but there were a lot of European number plated coaches in the car park as well as the Wang Dynasty coach UK Pty Ltd.
We then left the gift shop and went to look at a lovely little town called Drumnadrochit. A cute little place but very touristy with people sitting out at cafes having a beer and lunch. We tried to buy ourselves a devonshire tea but all the restaurants were sold out. We thought we would get a toasted sandwich but at $8 each we passed and headed back to Inverness to see some more of the town.
There was a very good band playing in a plaza area and we watched for a while talking to a group of Aussies.
We then found somewhere to have dinner and called it a day.
Loch Ness . A bit too choppy and windy to go for a boat trip
"We all live in a yellow submarine". This one was used to search for the Loch Ness Monster.
We found the Loch Ness Monster eventually
Nessie is definitely a for tourist creation and obviously it is working very well.
ReplyDelete