SALLY SORTS IT: I was charged €777 for a five minute taxi ride in Paris

Last October, while on vacation in Paris, I took a taxi with two friends, one of whom was on crutches because she broke her knee.

The taxi appeared legit, with a green light indicating it was for hire. During the five minute journey, the driver was initially chatty and spoke good English.

We arrived at our hotel and I gave him a €10 note for the €7.30 rate. He wouldn’t accept the note and insisted I pay by card because he had “brought too much cash that day.”

I went to tap my card on the machine but he told me to use a chip and a PIN. I was made to feel uncomfortable so I checked my Sainsbury’s Bank account when I got to the hotel and found out I had been scammed out of €777.77 – or £685. Despite this, the bank won’t refund me.

AS, Chatham, Kent.

Sally Hamilton replies: Zut alors! You were taken for a ride by this rogue Parisian taxi driver. You tried your best to resist his brutal techniques, but you were too trusting and he foiled you at every turn.

Strange as it was that he refused cash for the fare in the first place (few taxi drivers I’ve come across prefer card payment to coins and notes), you felt pressured to make the card payment and made you worried about what would happen if you didn’t do as he said.

I do understand that if you are in a country where you do not speak the language, it can be difficult to negotiate.

When you told the driver that you couldn’t see the load on screen because his machine was held together with duct tape, he responded rudely, along with the excuse that he couldn’t provide a receipt because the machine had lost power. paper.

It all came down to old-fashioned premeditated robbery – as blatant as if he had plucked your wallet from your handbag.

The transaction on your card statement was labeled ‘Hotelextra Lyon’, which was suspicious for a taxi driver operating in a city nearly 300 miles from Lyon.

You quickly complained to Sainsbury’s Bank and froze your card. When the call center opened on the Monday morning after the scam, the team said not to worry and fill out a chargeback claim form.

Feel free to send in the completed form. Many weeks passed and you heard nothing. You called again in January and were told the team would respond by the end of the month.

But then, the next day, you received a letter from the bank stating that the disputed transaction was valid and that the bank would not seek a refund from the merchant. When you expressed your consternation, the bank offered you £25.

The payment terminal used by the scammer was provided by SumUp, a popular international payment system provider. You also asked this company for help.

Sainsbury’s also contacted SumUp, but only in March. When I contacted SumUp on your behalf, it told me that it is trying to refund money to victims of fraud, but only if the money hasn’t ‘left our system’, which of course it did after nearly six months.

In fact, the money was gone within 24 hours and the account in question was blocked in October. It said it’s standard practice for victims in cases like yours to file a chargeback or Section 75 claim with their bank, which you had done.

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 says that a credit card provider is jointly responsible for breach of contract or misrepresentation by a merchant as long as purchases are over £100 and under £30,000.

Chargeback is similar, and while not legislated, most banks have joined the scheme. It can be used if a disputed purchase was made with a debit card or credit card for less than £100.

Either way, the banks will usually require proof to successfully file a claim. Unfortunately, because your unfair fare was verbally discussed with the driver and you had no receipt of your taxi fare to prove that the charge did not match the money received, you hit a roadblock.

I’ve asked Sainsbury’s to reconsider its decision and refund you. I am sorry to say that the bank declined despite strenuous efforts.

The most it offered was to freeze the interest on the unwanted payment for two months to give you time to pay it off.

The bank said that because you used your PIN, the rules mean it can’t process a Section 75 or chargeback claim. A Sainsbury’s Bank spokesman said: ‘We take fraud very seriously and regularly invest in measures to protect our customers. Unfortunately, in this case the customer has authorized and made a personal payment with her chip and pin code, so we cannot consider it fraud.’

You have now contacted the Financial Ombudsman.

An important lesson from this bloated taxi fraud is that holidaymakers remain skeptical if a taxi driver makes it difficult to pay. As difficult as it may feel, especially abroad, it is essential to check the transaction amount and ask for a receipt.

When a driver uses excuses like “the machine is broken,” it should raise red flags. If you get caught in such a scam, try to take a photo of the taxi license plate and report it to the police. This can be useful evidence if a fraud claim becomes necessary.

Bingo firm wants £1,450 but I thought the game was free

me occasionally gamble on bingo websites and recently did so by paying £30 to a website called Broadway Gaming.

I didn’t win, but kept playing on what I thought were “play for fun” games, at no cost.

When I checked my HSBC bank account on Monday, I was horrified to see ‘outstanding’ transactions of around £1,450 due to be paid to the site. The bank said I authorized the payments.

I emailed Broadway Gaming and was waiting for a response when I saw that the ‘open’ trades had disappeared from my account.

I called HSBC to be told that the payments had been declined by the gambling company and was told categorically that this meant that it was not possible to accept the payments in the future.

I assumed the site accepted my mistake in thinking I was playing for free. But when I checked my account, the money had been debited.

Ann.

Sally Hamilton replies: You told me that you were initially so grateful that the payments had not come through that you donated £725 – half of the amount involved – to relief efforts after the floods in Pakistan. But when the gambling firm took your money anyway, you realized that your luck had changed and you ended up in a nasty financial hole.

Although you were naive in assuming that the extra bets were free – you later checked that this company does not offer such ‘play for fun’ options – you said it was an easy assumption to make, as other sites do . This wasn’t really the point though, and you don’t blame the site for what happened.

You had been reassured several times during your call to HSBC that the payments would not be collected and you had made a significant charitable donation based on this.

I asked HSBC to investigate, and it agreed that you had been misinformed during your call. It refunded you £725 to cover your charitable gift, donated a further £100 to the same charity and awarded you £100 as an apology. You have transferred this last amount to Oxfam as a thank you for my involvement.

At your request, the bank has placed a gambling block on your debit card. She also retrained the employee involved.

A spokesman for HSBC said: ‘Our customers are our absolute priority and we regret that due to human error, anon was unable to obtain accurate information about some of the payments pending on its account.

“We have apologized to him and have taken action to put things right.”

Your case should serve as a warning to potential gamblers to check the rules of each game before handing over debit card details.

• Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk – include telephone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organization giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send any original documents, we cannot take any responsibility for that. The Daily Mail assumes no legal liability for answers provided.