I bought my husband suede mules from Marks & Spencer for £38. They were damaged, however, so I sent a message to M&S on social media site X to ask for a refund.
I received a private message asking for my phone number and later received a call from someone who said they were from M&S.
They asked me to download the money transfer app WorldRemit to receive my refund plus compensation.
The caller said they would pay me £100 but, instead, took £200 from my bank account.
When I realised it was a scam I contacted my bank, Santander, but it will not refund me. I am sick with worry as I cannot afford to lose £200.
S.M., Sutton Coldfield.
Prying eyes: A reader was scammed out of £200 after contacting Marks & Spencer for a refund over social media
Sally Hamilton replies: Shoppers need to be increasingly wary of scammers posing as customer service staff.
When trouble hits a firm, as happened to M&S following the April cyber attack on its business, there were plenty of chancers waiting to catch out unwary customers who needed to contact the firm over missing orders and refunds.
When you wanted to return the mules, you approached M&S publicly on X (formerly Twitter).
The scammers, seemingly watching out for activity on the retailer’s X account, were ready to exploit the situation.
They sent you a direct message, which you tell me looked authentic, in which they asked for details including your phone number.
I thought the generous compensation sum they were offering, which amounted to £62 on top of the shoe refund, should have rung alarm bells.
But M&S had been sending out e-gift cards as compensation to some customers whose orders were affected by the hack upheaval, so it didn’t strike you as out of the ordinary (though these were generally only for £5 or £10).
You followed the instructions on the WorldRemit page where a message seemed to suggest you were being paid £100.
But you received an authorisation notification from your bank Santander asking if you wanted to pay £100 to WorldRemit.
You told the imposter, who was still on the phone: ‘This tells me if I press “yes”, I am paying you £100’ – so you pressed ‘no’. The caller claimed, convincingly at first, that it was an error and asked you to try again.
When you received the same authorisation message from Santander, you again pressed ‘no’ and hung up, realising finally the caller was a scammer.
You received a text from Santander to say it had refused a payment request for a further £300.
When you phoned the bank, you were flabbergasted that the two earlier payments for £100 each had gone through. Two days later, the bank told you this would not be reimbursed.
You were upset by Santander’s explanation that you had authorised the payments through Apple Pay. You say you have never used this app, although it is on your phone. The scammers must have hacked it.
I asked Santander to investigate. After a few days, it agreed to refund your £200. The bank explained that while you thought you had rejected two payments, you had given the transactions the green light.
Its fraud prevention system detected the third suspicious request and texted you a warning, which is when you hung up on the scammer.
A Santander spokesman says: ‘We have the utmost sympathy for anyone who experiences any type of fraud or scam.
‘S.M. had approved two payments through Apple Pay under the impression she was receiving a refund. Unfortunately, this was part of a scam.’
Meanwhile, you have received your shoe refund from M&S – back to the debit card you paid with.
You have previously found X an effective platform for getting things resolved swiftly after complaints have gone ignored over phone or email.
You were caught off guard on this occasion and plan never to reply to anything on X again – nor download anything on request, even if it looks legitimate. Sage advice.
Home Office won’t pay my refund
I am due a £624 refund from the Home Office’s UK Visas and Immigration division for the Immigration Health Surcharge as I changed visas and payments overlapped.
I have tried all avenues in getting this back over six months – please help.
K.W., London.
Sally Hamilton replies: The Immigration Health Surcharge is a fee introduced ten years ago that most non-UK nationals must pay alongside their visas that allow them to live and work here. The charge allows them to have access to the NHS.
The cost varies depending on the visa type. You explained how in October 2021 you paid £1,872, which was linked to your visa, covering a three-year PhD course.
You made the payment from your NatWest International account, which you later closed in February 2023.
Meanwhile, you married a British national and switched to a two-and-a-half-year spouse visa, which involved you having to pay another IHS charge of £1,560.
Any payments for overlapping periods should be reimbursed within six weeks. But when no money arrived, you gave the department a prod.
It confirmed the sum owed but you were told it would go direct to the bank account held on its records – even though you told them it was closed.
Both the visa department and NatWest said the payment would be rejected and returned to sender.
This, NatWest said, would prompt an email asking you for up-to-date account details to which the payment would then be sent. However, no email arrived.
After four attempts to escalate your request, you were told that the refund had already been sent and the case was closed.
In August, NatWest said the money had been returned the same day it had been sent – way back in February.
I asked the Home Office to get its act together pronto and find your money. Some two weeks later you confirmed the reimbursement had finally landed in your account.
- Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.
