vinylweatherman
You type well loads
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2004
- Location
- United Kingdom
What I find most worrying is that this is two completely different descriptors. This rules out quite a few of the innocent explanations such as a pre-auth and the actual charge both showing on the card before the pre-auth drops off. The bank will see this as two separate purchases with two different online merchants, not a single transaction that got posted twice.
Despite needing to keep such schemes under the radar, more and more casinos are inflating the throughput unnecessarily by using the scheme for non-US players. Unlike US players, many of whom know the score, a non-US player who suddenly sees this amongst their usual gambling transactions that are correctly coded as such may react by thinking they have become a victim of fraud, and not automatically accepting that it is their casino deposit.
I have played at La Vida for some time, but earlier this year I suddenly found I had bought several grands worth of "software" at £699.99 a pop. Now my bank knows full well that this was my gambling card, and was hammered for gambling transactions of even greater amounts, but the impression that I had suddenly quit gambling and was buying many thousands of pounds worth of software from some obscure (and fake) offshore companies presented a significant risk that the bank would think I had been defrauded and act accordingly. Luckily for the casino, this was Barclays, the most laid back bank I have ever come across with regard to gambling transactions. Other banks often blocked anything over £100 or £200, or more than a couple of deposits per day, as their automated fraud detection algorithms were so tight.
Miscoding a transaction to a UK bank is taking a completely unnecessary risk, and although gambling here is legal, moneylaundering via fake offshore merchant sites is not. I didn't take this up with Barclays, as I knew what was going on because of being a member here, and seeing what is happening in the US. I accepted that my deposits had for some reason been routed via a US facing processor. Just why is a puzzle though, as the casino had pulled out of the US a while back, and had no need to retain a US facing processor.
It may look similarly odd to a Canadian bank where they know the customer uses the card for gambling, and suddenly they fire off several non gambling transactions for other "sinful pleasures".
The US banks all know damn well what is going on, but until they have proof, they cannot act by blocking or reversing the transactions in case they turn out to be legit.
Despite needing to keep such schemes under the radar, more and more casinos are inflating the throughput unnecessarily by using the scheme for non-US players. Unlike US players, many of whom know the score, a non-US player who suddenly sees this amongst their usual gambling transactions that are correctly coded as such may react by thinking they have become a victim of fraud, and not automatically accepting that it is their casino deposit.
I have played at La Vida for some time, but earlier this year I suddenly found I had bought several grands worth of "software" at £699.99 a pop. Now my bank knows full well that this was my gambling card, and was hammered for gambling transactions of even greater amounts, but the impression that I had suddenly quit gambling and was buying many thousands of pounds worth of software from some obscure (and fake) offshore companies presented a significant risk that the bank would think I had been defrauded and act accordingly. Luckily for the casino, this was Barclays, the most laid back bank I have ever come across with regard to gambling transactions. Other banks often blocked anything over £100 or £200, or more than a couple of deposits per day, as their automated fraud detection algorithms were so tight.
Miscoding a transaction to a UK bank is taking a completely unnecessary risk, and although gambling here is legal, moneylaundering via fake offshore merchant sites is not. I didn't take this up with Barclays, as I knew what was going on because of being a member here, and seeing what is happening in the US. I accepted that my deposits had for some reason been routed via a US facing processor. Just why is a puzzle though, as the casino had pulled out of the US a while back, and had no need to retain a US facing processor.
It may look similarly odd to a Canadian bank where they know the customer uses the card for gambling, and suddenly they fire off several non gambling transactions for other "sinful pleasures".
The US banks all know damn well what is going on, but until they have proof, they cannot act by blocking or reversing the transactions in case they turn out to be legit.