On my final day in Bangkok, I went to Pantip plaza with some friends to speck out some copy phones. We spent close to 3 hours there going from counter to counter trying to find a deal we could live with. It was no fun dealing with the sellers there. All the sellers there warned us of other sellers showing a quality phone only to switch it for a bad quality phone once the sale is done. After making a purchase and going through the setup, they did provide a phone that was not what we inspected at the counter, but that is not the problem.
Once we were back in the hotel I noticed a message on my Android Phone (Not the new phone I purchased) telling me that my request to change my western union password was approved. Then several transactions were shown to be processed. I opened my credit card app and saw several pending transactions. I downloaded the Western Union app and tried to cancel the Western Union transactions. They don't make it easy and I had to copy and paste the authorization number into a screen and write a message. I asked them to cancel the fraudulent transaction and to remove my credit card from their site. On the next few that I had to notify them to cancel I asked them to also delete my account.
The transactions were canceled and I was no-longer able to log onto western union so I assumed they canceled my account.... They didn't. When I was at the airport I checked my mail and there was a flood of Western Union pending transactions... I sent off as many fraud notices that I could and soon their webpage seem to become unresponsive. Now I was sitting on the plane unable to do anything with their webpage. I sent an email to my bank with "Fraud" in the subject line and told them that all the western union transactions being processed against my credit card were not initiated by me and were fraudulent.
Western union only stopped the transactions after $2,000 was collected from someone in Thailand, but not because they feared fraud. They canceled the transactions only because my bank refused to process the pending payments.
Once I got home my bank asked me to come in and sign a incident report and they put the money back in my account. Western union is unsure as to what their actions will be. One person told me that they will return the money since it was fraudulent transactions. Another person in the Fraud unit told me that they can't return the money that was picked up from the agent. Western union also told me that I had to report the theft to my local authorities. I laughed and told them that I was in Thailand and the fradulent transactions took place in Thailand and the money was picked up from an agent in Thailand... I also asked them to suggest which police department I should contact? The county police or the state police? They didn't answer the question.
So do I think Pantip had anything to do with this? I can't say for sure but I will put my phone in airplane mode when I am in Pantip in the future.
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If you need to put a purchase on your credit card, walk over to the closest ATM, and pull the cash out off your credit card, and pay with that. I hope you don't pay for restaurant meals with a credit card as well. Generally, it's probably not a good idea to hand your credit card to people who make $250/month.
Originally Posted by francois
