NO2ID

To-day, I bought a car. This meant that my spending-pattern for the day was `unusual', so, without contacting me, my bank refused to authorise my subsequent purchase of fuel. The operator went to the back-office, called the bank and obtained an `authorisation code'. He keyed this in, but the purchase was still declined.

I crossed the road, obtained cash from a machine (with the same card) and paid with that.

Of course, electronic payment is still a very new system, used only by a few people, and I'm sure that it will get more reliable as the system settles-down.

Yeah, I had this one when I bought a motorcycle service and insurance in one week.

I ripped into them for not bothering to contact me before blocking the purchase.

Yes, but the point is . . .

As I understand it, to prevent fraud. In the case of a colleague a few years back, they stopped unauthorised spending on his card. Someone had cloned it.

My problem is not that they monitor for unusual spending patterns, but that they will block a purchase without speaking to the customer first.

Technology isn't perfect so we shouldn't worry about having ID cards cos they won't be perfect.

What was yours?

mounty wrote, more than once:



May I have a go please?

Perhaps the point is that the bank accepted the suspicious transaction of high value (car purchase), possibly to the detriment of itself and its banking customer. It then declined the much smaller transaction, for purchase of fuel, thus closing the gate after the horse had bolted, or car driven off.

The sense of this escapes me, and perhaps mounty too. Presumably the bank was not anticipating that its action would disable the suspected fraudster, "sans essence", at the roadside - enabling arrest, recovery of the vehicle, or both.

Best regards

Banks seem to do this alot, I had a transaction refused with my card! but then the next second the system allowed me to make payment with a cheque.. this is annoying when it is ones own money!......

My transactions were similar - the service (the first transaction) was approximately twice the value of the insurance. Yet neither struck me as being unusual. Services are several months apart, insurance is annual, so patterns will be somewhat irregular - only the insurance would be predictable with any accuracy by the bank.

As I said, I don't have a problem with my bank monitoring patterns. I have a problem with them embarrassing me with suppliers.

No, people, I am not seeking to burden you with the trivia of my daily life. The point is that yet again an electronic system has failed.

An automatic mechanism for detecting fraud via unusual spending-patterns did not take into account the fact that the unusually large transaction was a cash withdrawal made by me in person (I had to verify my identity).

The exceptional authorisation mechanism did not work.

I was still able to withdraw cash, so the card wasn't really `stopped' anyway.

The overall point is that a fairly mature electronic system, with its operators having a direct commercial interest in its reliability, didn't work, and it was me that suffered (minor inconvenience in this case). Many readers will have had similar experiences. Can anyone really imagine just how bad the proposed id. card scheme will be, with so many more data enquiries going on ? It is just guaranteed to be chaos.

The system probably didn't stop the cash withdrawals because of the its reliance on PINs to determine that it is a genuine transaction. There's more than one system at work here. An automated spending pattern analysis and the system that authorises a transaction because of the PIN. Put the two together and you have the electronic version of a migraine.

I suggest we all hoard our money under the mattress and stuff them all.

I read this thread - and others like it with interest. It seems that there once existed a halcyon era - before 'technology' (and would someone define that word for me please?) - where no mistakes were ever made, no inconvenience or injury was caused by foul-ups and no-one ever lost money.

Please tell me when and where this happened.

It didn't. No one is suggesting that it did. Merely that technology isn't the panacea some believe it to be.

The electronic system replaced a manual, paper system which indeed was expensive and error-prone.

What unreliable and expensive system is the NIR to replace ?

Hmmm why don't we all go back into our caves!!!!!!

Times change.

"Technology isn't perfect so we shouldn't worry about having ID cards cos they won't be perfect".


So lets all spend a load of money on it then? Right!?

Lets face it, technology is being used to enslave us when it's promise was always to liberate.

Justin.

There was an MP on TV this morning suggesting that disabling mobile phone signals in schools would stop the current craze for "happy slapping". Obviously this man's grasp of technology is somewhat limited. He did not seem to realise that the camera portion of a phone is independant of the phone part.

Are we to trust these people to make decisions regarding such a hi-tech system as the proposed biometric ID card scheme?

Just as barmy is the proposal to charge for road usage based on satellites snooping on us from the sky and logging our trips to the corner shop. Just remember the adage "Keep It Simple Studip" (KISS).

Incidentally I am an professional IT Systems Developer, not a Ludite.

Just to correct you on a point of fact; the satellites only transmit position information (actually it's little more than an accurate time signal). The data logging would take place on the vehicle (that means on our vehicles, not on any used by criminals!)

The rest, I agree with you completely.