Nationwide Flex Plus and a warning in general to use 2FA

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I have posted in another thread briefly.

I know a lot of people on here use the Nationwide Flex Plus for travelling, as we do.

I noticed 4 transactions to Shein had appeared on the account via PayPal. We don’t use Shein regularly and absolutely not for just shy of 1k worth of clothes. You could clothe a village for that at Shein.

Rang Nationwide to report it, no problem they said, money will be back in 24 hours.

Checked credit card and another transaction there for Shein for £20 via PayPal.

They also said don’t worry, they will sort it.

Wife rang PayPal who refused to help saying she didn’t have an account, which was odd, as clearly, she did.

All a bit weird but reported and being refunded.

Imagine my surprise when the next day Nationwide email to say they won’t be refunding as it was a purchase made through our card. Wife rang them and was met with a very rude and unhelpful chap who basically said it was PayPals problem not theirs and was a normal pattern of spending for us. Clearly, it wasn’t.

Meanwhile I checked her iPad to see loads of emails from Shein and PayPal from the day before. None of these came through to her phone. I checked the G mail account to find the cheeky swines had somehow hacked her difficult to guess password and used PayPal forgot password to email themselves a new password to her account.

Also, they had removed her phone from the devices menu in G mail so it wouldn’t receive any notifications and set up their own email and number for recovery.

They then made large purchases from Shein using both cards via PayPal and immediately shut down the PayPal account which is why PayPal initially said she hadn’t got an account because they had shut it!

I can only presume they then email Shein and ask them for a refund on another account which is how they get the actual cash.

I managed to secure the G mail account with 2 factor authentication and Lucy rang PayPal again.

This time they put her through to someone who immediately reversed the transactions and refunded to the Nationwide account.

I suppose the takeaways are always secure everything with 2 factor authentication, emails the lot, don’t use PayPal for anything and finally, don’t think Nationwide will help as if it isn’t specifically their problem, they won’t.

To Nationwide’s credit, they have apologised and offered us a cash apology for handling it abysmally. Before I found the emails, we had no idea how they had used the cards and were stuck as to how to retrieve the cash.

Tesco Credit Card immediately refunded and no questions asked.

Just thought I would warn others, it was a very stressful few days and started with an email hack. It was a very sophisticated fraud and I had no idea what had happened till after.

We could have lost the lot, and had no Shein clothes to show for it. :-(
 

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