Creation credit card: Fraud problem locked me from my account

A man has won a nearly £600 compensation pay out from his credit card provider with the help of This is Money after his account was blocked for four months after he was the victim of £1,871 in fraud.

Peter Wilson, 69, from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, had his IHG Rewards Creation credit card replaced in May after he noticed thousands of pounds of payments to Apple on his account which he hadn’t made.

Although Creation paid him back, his account was ‘temporarily suspended’ after he used the new card once.

Peter Wilson found his Creation credit card account was suspended for 4 months after he fell victim to fraud. He was wrongly told the account had been given to a ‘third party’ 

This temporary suspension left Mr Wilson without access to his card for four months by the time he emailed This is Money at the end of September, having got nowhere with the credit card company’s customer services.

He said when he had tried to contact Creation’s customer support he was ‘twice addressed as if I was a criminal’, and that they could not help him as ‘the account was now “with a third party.”

‘They would offer no information on this third party nor give a time frame for them to contact me’, he said, and was left wondering if it was a debt collection agency or the police.

On top of being unable to use his card, the suspension meant he could not get into his account to obtain any refunds paid to him. 

This included £210 worth of cricket tickets to the England vs West Indies test match at Lord’s, London, scheduled for earlier this year, which was played behind closed doors in Southampton in the summer due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The tickets were refunded to him in mid-June but he was unable to get hold of the money for months afterwards.

Mr Wilson was due a £210 refund for tickets to the England v West Indies test match in the summer which was played behind closed doors, but could not get into his account

When This is Money contacted Creation at the end of September, it said Mr Wilson had incorrectly been told the account had been sent to a third party, and that the initial decision to block his card was due to the original £1,871 worth of fraud he had fallen victim to.

Three days after we wrote to them, it had opened another credit card account for him, written off his £322 outstanding balance, waived the £99 credit card fee and handed him £175 in compensation for the problems he had suffered.

However, he did have to chase up the £210 he was owed for his refunded cricket tickets himself, he said.

Creation offers a number of points-earning credit cards, including the InterContinental Hotels Group one which offers one IHG point per every £1 spent. 

It also offers loans through brands like Currys PC World, SCS and DFS, and is part of French banking group BNP Paribas, which sponsors the French Open tennis tournament. 

A Creation spokesperson said: ‘We understand that Mr Wilson was incorrectly informed about the status of his account and was therefore unable to use his card.

‘We’re really sorry about this. We’ve removed the remaining balance from Mr Wilson’s card and added a credit to his account to compensate for his inconvenience. We have reactivated Mr Wilson’s account and have contacted him to explain the situation.

‘We haven’t seen this situation happen with other customers however we’ve updated our internal processes and added additional training for our contact centre colleagues to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk