A member of our Residents' Assoc e-mailed this :Since having my card cloned by Shell Hanwell, £9,090 in cash +charges + interest, in total just short of £10K was taken. As a result, Jane and I have been on a campaign, myself, providing information to and putting pressure on the local police and Jane attacking Shell Public Relations. I have passed on as much information as I had from so many of your responses and I understand that Malcolm Weller has also been compiling a list. Our fear was not to promote anything to alert the garage staff that we were on to them. Today, through PC Malcolm Wolfe of our Neighbourhood Police Team I heard that there has been an investigation going on and that his team had, for the meantime, been asked to stay off of the case. He understood that some result may be imminent and later today it was confirmed in a second report that there had been one arrest and that person has been charged. The enquiry is still ongoing so hopefully there will be more successes in due course. I am really pleased about this, apart from the initial shock and the inconvenience of re-establishing subscriptions and direct debits that I have charged to the card, there was no real loss for me as the credit card company have cleared the fraudulent transactions off of my account. (Mind you if it was not for these people, our credit card charges would not need to be so high). I was angry this was taking place so near to our homes and wanted to ensure others in our community did not encounter the same distress that comes with the discovery that it has happened to you. Thank you to everyone who said they had also had cards cloned here – this really shows the power we have when we communicate and not sit at home thinking “poor me” or “why does this only happen to me” more often than not, others, even those you know, have suffered the same way. In particular, this shows the value of our Googlegroup. Finally despite all the criticism they get, this provides evidence of action behind the scenes within our Police Service which understandably we cannot all be privy to. – Well done to them, we just hope that magistrates and members of the judiciary have also had cards cloned and these guys get what they deserve and the efforts of the police are again, not in vain.
Viv Ellis ● 6446d