So, first thing this morning, I logged in again and found exactly the same discrepancy and no explanation of the cause.  So, I gave the bank a call and it turned out that someone has had a nice shopping spree at my expense – to the tune of over £400!

I can’t believe it – am absolutely devastated.  The bank has cancelled our cards (it’ll take 7-10 days before we get our new ones) and is “investigating the transaction”.  Apparently we’ll get a call from the Fraud Department in the next 3-4 working days and they’ll give us a timescale for getting it resolved.  We won’t see our money back until their investigation is complete, so we’re down £400+ for the foreseeable future.

What’s amazing me is that there doesn’t seem to be any fraudulent activity monitoring system in place for current account holders that would have flagged this up.  I can remember ordering a takeaway online once using a credit card – the transaction was declined and within minutes I had the CC company on the phone to check it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction!  When we confirmed that we did indeed want to order the takeaway, they released the block and we were able to order without any problem.  I’d have expected something like that with the current account as well – a £400+ clothes shopping spree (we were told it was women’s clothes) should have flagged up as being suspicious because it’s TOTALLY abnormal for our account.

So, now we just have to cross all of our fingers and toes and hope that we get our money back quickly!