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Story URL: http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39130998,00.htm

New Look IT glitch raids customers bank accounts
Duplicate card payments taken by high-street retailer

By Andy McCue

Published: Tuesday 07 June 2005

A computer glitch at high-street retailer New Look has resulted in customers having duplicate payments taken directly out of their bank accounts without authorisation.

New Look is blaming a "technical issue with credit data" that resulted in transactions in up to 30 stores being processed twice by GE Capital.

silicon.com was contacted by one customer who noticed a mystery Maestro debit card payment of £70 had been taken directly out of her bank account by New Look on 10 May.

The payment was the same amount as a debit card transaction she had made a month earlier in a New Look store on 11 April yet she had not bought anything from the shop since then. On querying the duplicate withdrawal with her bank she was told that the money had been refunded to her account on 16 May by New Look.

The customer subsequently went back to the New Look store the initial payment had been made at where a supervisor admitted other customers had been affected by the double payment because of an "IT glitch".

But the supervisor could not say how the store had managed to withdraw the money again from customers' accounts without authorisation either through chip and PIN or a signature and simply referred the customer to a store helpline number if she had any further queries.

The customer, who wished to remain anonymous, has since received an apology and a £10 voucher as a gesture of goodwill. New Look told her it had been unable to inform affected customers of the glitch because of data protection laws.

Although now reassured, the customer told silicon.com: "It is very frightening that a high-street retailer could take £70 out of my account so easily a month after the original payment."

No one at New Look was available for comment.