A small windfall

[ffutures]

Back in the dawn of time my bank conned me into taking out a credit card insurance policy from Card Protection Plan Ltd., which was supposed to make things easier if my cards were ever stolen or used fraudulently, but turned out to offer little more protection than I had under UK law anyway.

Towards the end of last year I was asked if I wanted to make a free claim against the policy issuer; needless to say, I did, thinking I might get a token payment eventually. And for a long time nothing happened.

Except that today I opened my mail when I got home, and found a cheque for £184.05 - not a huge amount, but not to be sneezed at. Certainly better than I would have got if I'd followed my first instinct and assumed it was another con and binned it. Not sure what the moral is, except that I would have been better off if I hadn't fallen for this scam in the first place, but at least I've got a little of it back.

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I got the same, although a slightly different amount. My understanding (I could be wrong here though) is that these were originally policies that had at least some point to them. Then the law changed to give this protection automatically to credit card holders, but CPP continued taking direct debits out. So I think the compensation is only for the period since the law changed.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sounds plausible, I remember that there was a major hassle with the police etc. the first time my credit card details were used fraudulently, back in the eighties, these days it's a much simpler process.