My credit card has been auto blocked after six unauthorised withdrawals by 'Freenet'.

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › My credit card has been auto blocked after six unauthorised withdrawals by 'Freenet'.

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kingjj

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#503086 7-Aug-2011 19:56

IlDuce:
blakamin:
1080p:
You need to call them or go in and see them to enable them to change your customer ID number.?

And then you lose all your "pay anyone" accounts..

I found it strange when I opened an ANZ account just under a year ago, an internet account, that by default one cannot pay for anything bought online or bills. The only way to remove money from my account was via ATM... I couldn't transfer it to another persons account. Kiwibank, ASB, BNZ, and Westpac all can do that out the box.

Really? Set up a new account with ANZ earlier this year and everything was activated by default. The only thing that was blocked was transferring over $1000 in a single transaction which only took a call to sort out.

John2010

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#503630 9-Aug-2011 02:15

I found it strange when I opened an ANZ account just under a year ago, an internet account, that by default one cannot pay for anything bought online or bills. The only way to remove money from my account was via ATM... I couldn't transfer it to another persons account. Kiwibank, ASB, BNZ, and Westpac all can do that out the box.

Maybe someone from ANZ will come along with better information but I understand it is as follows.

In the first instance if one is an existing customer one has to register for internet banking. If you are already registered for "Phone Direct" then this can be done on-line else one has to phone or visit to get a registration number and PIN. Then if wanted one has to once only activate the "Pay Anyone" service (which can be done on-line) in order to transfer money to others or pay bills. It may be that if one is a new customer that this can be done with the customer service officer at the time of presenting oneself to open the account but I cannot comment on that from experience as we have been ANZ customers since well before the internet was dreamt of

. For other existing or subsequent additional linked accounts (not necessarily of the same account number) then "Pay Anyone" access is automatic, so it is a once off thing when one first takes up internet banking - well it has been for us.

This currently gives you $1,000/day to transfer to anyone you wish. You need a further arrangement which can be initiated on-line but which is normally confirmed by the bank by mail in order to transfer more than $1,000/day; this higher dollar amount facility normally expires after a short life (4 weeks??) and so has to be renewed if needed again.

You can, of course, always transfer as much money as you wish to other linked accounts, including credit cards, regardless of whether one has "Pay Anyone" or not.

petercummins

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#503762 9-Aug-2011 11:38

I have had FreeNet take money out of my account many times without authorization and they do not always pay it back.
I thought that after my card expired and I closed my account with them it would stop them but last week they took $2537.
Had to cancel my card and they still do not reply to my emails!!!!!!!!

stevenz

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#503789 9-Aug-2011 12:55

petercummins: I have had FreeNet take money out of my account many times without authorization and they do not always pay it back.
I thought that after my card expired and I closed my account with them it would stop them but last week they took $2537.
Had to cancel my card and they still do not reply to my emails!!!!!!!!

If you believe they've done so without merit, then report them to the bank. You should probably have sorted it out before cancelling the card though.

@KnightNZ

mattwnz

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#504631 10-Aug-2011 20:22

petercummins: I have had FreeNet take money out of my account many times without authorization and they do not always pay it back.
I thought that after my card expired and I closed my account with them it would stop them but last week they took $2537.
Had to cancel my card and they still do not reply to my emails!!!!!!!!

Are you sure you actually cancelled the account? It sounds like you still had the account active, and they have just continued to bill you over the years, which is reasonable if the account wasn't cancelled.

FierceGuppy

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#504677 10-Aug-2011 21:41

petercummins: I have had FreeNet take money out of my account many times without authorization and they do not always pay it back.
I thought that after my card expired and I closed my account with them it would stop them but last week they took $2537.
Had to cancel my card and they still do not reply to my emails!!!!!!!!

Whoah... The amount taken using my credit card details was small by comparison. Freenet has to pay back every cent. Get your bank to investigate it. Unless you've given your pin number away or have lost your credit card without reporting it then you're covered. BTW, nobody at Freenet bothers to answer Freenet's 0800 number let alone reply to emails.

Yesterday I phoned an ANZ credit card fraud investigator. He said it was an innocent mistake and has unblocked my credit card. At least I can now see the transactions for myself.

05/08/2011    03/08/2011   FREENET/KWIKNET GRAFTON                       $302.40+
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $153.60-
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $76.80-
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $9.60-
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $4.80-
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $38.40-
04/08/2011    03/08/2011   Freenet/Kwiknet Auckland    $19.20-

When I first called the ANZ about this on the Saturday 6th the woman that answered never told me the $302.40 was a deposit, not a withdrawal. grrrrr....    Anyway, I'm glad the money was expeditiously returned.

Yesterday I called Compass Communications which are "affiliated" (their word) with Freenet. There is apparently a guy at Compass Communications called Ivan who handles Freenet enqueries but a new phone system has been installed and I got dumped three times when trying to patch me through to him. I called them the fourth time and I got an Asian lady who said Ivan wasn't in. She viewed the details of my Freenet account and the credit card expiry date details had been updated. She thought I or a family member had updated them and had no answer when I said that it wasn't the case and that the money went to Freenet NOT to relatives. I told her to tell Ivan to call me, so naturally he didn't.

One more thing occurred to me yesterday after the Compass Communications kerfuffle. I've been a Paradise Net customer for nine years and have never updated my credit card details. :-/

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LennonNZ

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#504700 10-Aug-2011 22:14

Freenet was just a company Compass set up to give free internet access to people.

So if you ran a free dial up ISP Terminating on clear's network there would be LOTS of minutes from Telecom's Network and Clear would pay the ISP's for getting calls into their network because of the interconnect arrangement between Clear and Telecom.

Clear had Zfree
Slingshot had i4free
Compass had Freenet

After Telecom/TelstraClear re-did their interconnection agreement (middle 2000?) it became effectively free between the 2 networks and thus the free ISP's got no money from clear and the free ISPs in NZ died.

nigelj

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#504711 10-Aug-2011 22:23

FierceGuppy: The thief just needs to know the MM/YY expiry date on the old credit card and then he can easily deduce the new one. He's got the month. The month is always the same, so all he needs to know is the year. ANZ issues a new credit card every two years. They're issued with different 3 digit security codes of course, but some online retailers don't require it.

Popping up from lurking in this thread:

a) Not all banks keep the same MM value on re-issues of cards, I know from my parent's that Westpac (when they last re-issued their cards) had brought out a policy to randomly change the expiration month of the cards as well as bumping the year by two, with the sole purpose of preventing this.
b) If I remember correctly, merchants aren't actually allowed to store the security code value, (nor do they need to for repeat transactions).

I can't remember where I actually read this in concrete, but I also recall from talking to several people that run companies that did credit-card processing, but for repeat transactions/rebills they basically get an authorisation code that they need to the payment gateway, instead of all the other details.

I know some sites, when they mightn't help to, do prompt for the CSV code though (MyLotto is a good example) which I presume is to try and combat the "X left their computer unlocked/someone hacked into X's MyLotto account" type of fraud.

That said, different payment gateways/banks/etc seem to have different rules for handling data like that.

FierceGuppy

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#504781 11-Aug-2011 06:45

nigelj: I can't remember where I actually read this in concrete, but I also recall from talking to several people that run companies that did credit-card processing, but for repeat transactions/rebills they basically get an authorisation code that they need to the payment gateway, instead of all the other details.

The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle falls into place. I guess an authorisation code saves bother to business and customer but I'm not enthusiastic about the idea.

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