Amazon Prime fraud on BA Premium Plus Amex

[Pointsamateur]

I’ve had some fraudulent transactions on my BAPP, which Amex didn’t really get to grips with, and Amazon were worse than useless. So I wanted to canvas opinion and see if anyone else had similar experiences, and could explain something I still don’t understand.

Short version is that someone seems to have started charging a monthly Amazon prime membership to my BAPP card; started with a £0.99 tester, then had £7.99 per month. I asked Amazon, and they confirmed there is an account using my card, but as it’s not in my name, they can’t tell me anything about it, or stop the subscription.

When I flagged it to Amex, they said they would cancel the card, and send me a new one. So that should be the end of it. But no, the charges kept coming. I have just waited but finally found time to call them and get through to the fraud team yesterday, so it’s sorted, and they have now refunded all the fraudulent charges.

But I don’t understand how the charges were able to continue once my old card was “closed.” Amex tried to suggest it was still a valid payment method in my Amazon account – not true – and that maybe my Amazon account had been hacked – no sign of that at all, but password changed just to be safe. The old 16 digit card details should no longer work, so how was it still charged to my BAPP account, which obviously has a totally different card number, expiry, etc ?
Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

[Ladyshopper]

That’s interesting, I’ve had 2 emails from Amex now about a recurring charge for £8.99 for Amazon, which they’ve refused because it’s on an old cancelled card. I’ve not done anything about it, as the card is cancelled, but maybe I need to?

[NorthernLass]

I’ve had these from time to time and just assume that if they’re genuine the actual subscription administrator will get in touch with me at some point to request new card details. I’m fairly sure there have been more emails than I have subs so who knows what’s going on?!

[RK228]

I had the same initial issue with someone using my card for a Prime membership, but with my Platinum Cashback AMEX.

I think Amazon asked me to report the charge to AMEX as fraudulent and AMEX sent me out a new card. I didn’t have any issues after that and the fraudulent charges were removed.

[NorthernLass]

If it’s happening that much one is tempted to suspect an inside job!

[alig4th]

I had exactly the same email today from AMEX about Amazon fraud for 8.99 on a cancelled card. Clearly some criminal group have just got a haul of stolen credit card details and are trying their luck. As someone else said, if there’s an Amazon Prime account linked to an identity using a stolen credit card (rather than a failed attempt), sounds like there’s something actionable there so something for the police?

[memesweeper]

NorthernLass wrote:

If it’s happening that much one is tempted to suspect an inside job!

There’s certainly a pattern. Seems a lot of effort to go to to enjoy The Boys for free. Amex ought to be joining the dots on this, and I would imagine they are.

[NorthernLass]

I imagine this would be very small fry for Amex. It’s probably possible to report it to Action Fraud but it’s really difficult to know what they’re actually doing with the reports they get! If the criminal activity originates abroad it’s virtually impossible to trace unless there’s a huge investigation of the calibre that Interpol would be involved with.

[mhuk01]

This is interesting to come across this thread as I have had emails from Amex regarding a closed card account having attempted transactions from Amazon of 7.99 EURO. I can’t find any record of this on any of my Amazon accounts and have no idea what it’s for. Is it just best to go through Amex to explain this rather than Amazon then?

[Rui N.]

Yes, if you suspect fraud you should always go to the credit card provider never the company charging it – you wouldn’t talk to a café in Nepal, it’s not different if it’s an online company.

[can]

Did you have a supp card @Pointsamateur?

[Luca M]

To answer the op original question on how a Cancelled card did not stop the recurring payment being taken by Amazon, this is due to what is known as “Continuous Payment Authority”, which means that cards being replaced will not stop recurring charges previously “authorised”. What Amex should have done, which eventually the fraud team did, was to actually stop/cancel all the Continuous Payment Authority associated to the account and then issue you with a new card.

[yorkieflyer]

Yes Mrs Yorkieflyer has had the emails from Amex for declined authorisations for Amazon Prime for 7.99 on closed cards too.

[Pointsamateur]

RK228 wrote:

I had the same initial issue with someone using my card for a Prime membership, but with my Platinum Cashback AMEX.

I think Amazon asked me to report the charge to AMEX as fraudulent and AMEX sent me out a new card. I didn’t have any issues after that and the fraudulent charges were removed.

Thanks, that sounds like my situation, but clearly Amex didn’t do everything at their end, so the old card was left active somewhere.

[Pointsamateur]

Luca M wrote:

To answer the op original question on how a Cancelled card did not stop the recurring payment being taken by Amazon, this is due to what is known as “Continuous Payment Authority”, which means that cards being replaced will not stop recurring charges previously “authorised”. What Amex should have done, which eventually the fraud team did, was to actually stop/cancel all the Continuous Payment Authority associated to the account and then issue you with a new card.

I suspected that was the case, but had trusted them to sort it the first time I raised the issue. It started in Feb 2022.

[Pointsamateur]

can wrote:

Did you have a supp card @Pointsamateur?

Yes, but couldn’t think why that might be an issue, until you asked your question. But if it had been a charge to the supp card, on the statement, they split out the spend, so I would have seen it against the supp card surely ?

[Ladyshopper]

I’ve had another email today about another attempted charge from Amazon for £8.99 on the same closed account for another date.

Will definitely call Amex, although not sure what they can do. Little bit worrying though.

[NorthernLass]

As long as they are refusing these charges on closed cards, that’s main thing. The problem is that fraudulent transactions can be attempted from anywhere in the world and it’s really, really difficult to pursue these when they happen outside the UK. The only time I’ve seen Amex get involved with international fraud was on that Tinder Swindler documentary when there were big sums of money involved.
We have all sorts of subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix etc, I need to go through them all to check we’re only paying for what we actually receive!

[Jon]

Just to add a non-Amazon data point in case of use to anyone, I had an email the other day from Amex saying they’d “been unable to approve” a £50 charge from “Braintreecharge.com” (never heard of them, but Google suggests possibly something to do with PayPal). This was on a BAPP I cancelled over two years ago, and I can’t remember the last time I bought anything with PayPal – a long time ago. I just checked and the card isn’t connected to my PayPal account either (though perhaps it was once, not sure – but I don’t think there would have been any continuous payment authorisations on it there, as PayPal won’t let you remove a card unless you deactivate those first). No harm done, but have emailed Amex anyway.

First thing that came to mind was whether this might have anything to do with the 2018 BA data breach – maybe someone’s finally getting round to trying to use the stolen card data? 🤷‍♂️

[alig4th]

Ladyshopper wrote:

I’ve had another email today about another attempted charge from Amazon for £8.99 on the same closed account for another date.

Will definitely call Amex, although not sure what they can do. Little bit worrying though.

Ditto about another email about a fraud charge on the same card.

[Ladyshopper]

NorthernLass wrote:

As long as they are refusing these charges on closed cards, that’s main thing. The problem is that fraudulent transactions can be attempted from anywhere in the world and it’s really, really difficult to pursue these when they happen outside the UK. The only time I’ve seen Amex get involved with international fraud was on that Tinder Swindler documentary when there were big sums of money involved.
We have all sorts of subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix etc, I need to go through them all to check we’re only paying for what we actually receive!

They are refusing them as it’s a closed card, but it’s still worrying.

We did check our Amazon Prime just to make sure it hadn’t expired and they’d tried to charge a very old card, but it’s still up and running and not due to expire for a while.

[fbie]

I had my card for about 2 weeks – only added to google pay and used it that way – zero online purchases up until I noticed that Amazon payment. I paid for Disney Plus which was after the Amazon payment due to an offer and then I noticed the Amazon payment. On Sunday 13th £99.98 on Amazon for an account that wasn’t mine. This appears to be an internal problem/leak as so many other people are having the same issue and that my card is so new.

[Peter K]

fbie wrote:

I had my card for about 2 weeks – only added to google pay and used it that way – zero online purchases up until I noticed that Amazon payment. I paid for Disney Plus which was after the Amazon payment due to an offer and then I noticed the Amazon payment. On Sunday 13th £99.98 on Amazon for an account that wasn’t mine. This appears to be an internal problem/leak as so many other people are having the same issue and that my card is so new.

I’m sure you have, but definitely report this to amex. As your account is so new it might make it easier to track what is happening.

[Ladyshopper]

I spoke to Amex about it a while back – I was cancelling a different card, and also asked them about this. The person on live chat claimed not to be able to see any refused transactions on my old closed account, even when I gave him the dates. However, since bringing it up on live chat, I’ve had no more emails about it.

Very odd all round.

[FatherOfFour]

I’ve just had an email telling me Amex Pay has been deactivated on my Amex card in the app- and to call if it wasn’t me.
Well- it wasn’t me. The card is registered with Google Wallet only. I’ve had a look in the app and couldn’t even see how to link up to Amex Pay. (Perhaps because it’s already linked to Google)

Admittedly, I havent used with Google wallet for some time AND my statement has also just been produced, so I’m wondering if it’s an automated “opt-out” after 90? days.