On 14th March, I received a letter from Nat West Fraud department asking me to check the recent transactions on my credit card. I hadn't used the card for the best part of a year so I was immediately concerned by the letter and sure enough I logged into my account and found two transactions (19th Feb & 26th Feb) which I didn't recognise and which totaled just over £3600. There was also a £12 charge added by Natwest as an over limit fee since the transactions took the total above my credit limit. I immediately contacted the Fraud Dept using the information on the letter, and confirmed both the transactions as fraudulent, at that point I was also told of another attempted transaction on 3rd March which they had blocked and which had triggered them sending the letter, I hadn't made that one either. They then confirmed that they now had all of the details that they needed and that the transactions would be refunded within 5 days, they also mentioned sending a letter to me to sign in order to confirm the details. As of typing this, I haven't had a refund, nor had the letter which they wanted me to sign and return. On 18th March, a Direct Debit was taken out of my Bank Account to cover the £3600+ balance on my Natwest Credit Card, despite them being reported as Fraudulent 4 days earlier. I found an article online which said that although investigating the actual card fraud may take a "reasonable" amount of time, interest shouldn't be charged and payment shouldn't be requested by the card issuer until proof of liability was determined and provided. However Natwest decided to cheerfully take their payment, clearing the balance on 18th March, before any conclusion has been reached and whilst the investigation is clearly still ongoing. I contacted the Executive Office stating that it was two weeks since the fraud was reported and making an official complaint regarding the balance on the card being settled prior to any investigation being concluded, and telling them that I wanted the £3600 restoring to my Bank Account whilst the matter is still under investigation. This was met with a reply from the Executive Office, stating that my complaint had been received, apologising for me being mislead in relation to the amount of time I was told that it would take to investigate and refund the transactions and stating that it would probably take a further ten days for them to now investigate my complaint. Needless to say, the £3600 hasn't been refunded to my Bank Account, and that point has been entirely ignored. So my first question, is it ok for them to collect payment for Fraudulent Transactions from me after they have been reported and before any investigation has been concluded?, advice from other sources suggest that it isn't and that I should continue to pursue the refund, but where can I go to with the complaint next?, i've already complained to the Exec Office and I believe that the Ombudsman won't investigate until Natwest address my official complaint, and reply to it, which they effectively have eight weeks to do. I don't really care how long it takes them to investigate the transactions, provided they remain just a balance on the card statement, its the fact that i'm now £3600 out of pocket for card payments which I didn't make whilst Natwest drag their heels investigating the fraud, and now, also address my complaint. I've also reported it to Action Fraud and passed on the Crime Number to Natwest on my complaint to the Exec Office.

Hi, I sent a letter by recorded delivery to Prepay Technologies at their London address, however today it was returned by the Royal Mail, with a label stating that it has been refused. What is my next course of action?

Thank you for the prompt replies. When I contacted the Tyre vendor they said it was because they don't accept payment by prepaid credit cards. I asked them if they could confirm this on an email, along with the fact that they have processed no orders from me, nor have any pending, which they have done.

On 28/9 I attempted to buy some Tyres from a well known online Tyre distributor, upon entering my Paypal Mastercard payment details, the payment was immediately declined. Thinking it was simply a glitch with the checkout / website I waited a few minutes and then tried again, which was also declined, finally I tried a third time and this payment was also declined. I then checked my emails, to find that I had three emails from Paypal confirming that each of those three declined payments had been individually deducted from my paypal balance, 3 individual payments totaling £736.68. I then logged back into the Tyre Vendors' website and confirmed that no active orders had been placed with them, a phone call also confirmed the fact that they have received no payment from me, and had no orders on the system. I then logged into my Paypal Access card account, to see that the three declined payments hadn't actually been made, but were now appearing in a 'pending' status, and there was no way of cancelling them. I then contacted the card issuer - Prepay Technologies, using the 0845 number provided by Paypal, the person I spoke to, was very sympathetic but declared that there was no way that they could manually cancel off the three payments held in pending status and return the balance to my paypal account, and I would have to wait until 25th November for the pending status to essentially time out and the balance to be returned. Not happy at hearing the news that over £700 was going to be out of my reach for nearly two months, I asked to speak to a more senior member of staff who basically repeated the same thing, but advised me to contact Paypal to see if there was anything they could do to overturn the original payments to the card. So I contacted Paypal on their support number, who were even less helpful than Prepay Technologies, they stated that all they could do was escalate my complaint to an "Account Specialist" who would let me know their decision within 48 hours. Needless to say, that was almost a week ago and no email has been received. A further call to chase it up with Paypal has resulted in them simply washing their hands of the problem, stating that obtaining the refund is an issue between me and Prepay Technologies, and I should contact the card support 0845 number, and so the circle continues..... Obviously having £736 gone from my Paypal balance and tied up and out of reach for nearly two months simply from what are essentially duplicated declined transactions, is a problem, and the lack of funds is also now preventing me from making the purchase I had originally wanted to do in the first place. I'm guessing that the rules for prepayment cards differ from normal credit cards, but are they really able to hold a refund from what were immediately declined transactions for that long?. Any advice would be much appreciated.