Dear LPG,

There are lots of practical reasons to shop online once you get used to how it all works, but please be safe when you are adding your credit or debit card details as you get to the check-out part of your shopping experience. 

I recently came across a law called Section 75, which is designed to give protection to anyone who pays between £100 and £30,000 for an item online if they have paid by credit card, (►►►) but LPG is aware that many older people prefer not to get involved with them. 

So the question is how you can keep safe when spending online, if you don’t want to pay by credit card. 

It is one thing to protect the goods that you purchase, but more importantly we need to be sure that adding the details of any payment card will not result in the compromising of our bank account, especially if the account concerned is the one that our pension or another major source of regular income is paid into. 

The high street banks will all tell you that your money is secure but I believe that the safest way to pay out small amounts of money online is to have a completely separate current bank account.  I passed this information on to my Mother recently, and she went off to her bank to get a second current account, but she returned having been talked out of it.

She was told that facilitating a second current account is not a practice that falls within the bank’s policy.  I went back with my mum and pointed out that she has been a client of theirs for a while and if they were not able to help we would consider going to another bank, and on that occasion we left with the account that she wanted. 

So she now keeps about £20.00 in that account and, before she buys something online, transfers the money it will cost into what she calls her ‘computer’ current account. She then pays using the details of that card and not her primary one.  Even though she cannot be any surer of getting her item intact, she is absolutely sure that there is a limit to how much anyone who manages to get her account details can steal

It is just my opinion but current account number two is a pretty fool-proof way to make sure that one keeps personal money completely separate from any money spent online. 

VT, Crystal Palace

As ever LPG found some information…

  (►►►)    (►►►)