I wrote three weeks ago about my less than super experience dealing with Tuxedo Money – aka Travelex, for a slew of fraudulent transactions.

Initially Supercard were not following their own Terms and Conditions, but after about a week they applied a series of credit to my account in respect of the fraud. Well, that is, all except for one transaction.

A number of the transactions were for the same amount at the same or similar merchants. Indeed there were two charges for $250 which converted to £164.94.

A call to the Service Centre secured confirmation that this should have been refunded and a promise that it would be. I duly scanned and sent copies of my credit card statement to prove the point.

One week later and the same promise, which likewise turned out to be empty.

Luckily in the UK, the process by which you can access our Small Claims Court is very easy. In fact it’s online now. You enter details of the claim, pay the court fee by debit or credit card and they post it to the defendant. You don’t supply any papers at this point, just as much detail of the claim as you can. The court sends off the papers to the defendant.

Another weeks passes and I get a letter from the Court, with, would be believe it,  a defence. What?

Well you see, it appears that Travelex hasn’t refunded the second charge because it was only an authorisation. That’s right, despite being shown on my statement as a charge, Travelex Supercard said that it had never been settled with the merchant so I wasn’t out of pocket.

I wrote a fairly blunt letter to the person who signed the defence and got a call within a few hours of it arriving with them. They had already processed the refund to my account and were calling to confirm whether it had appeared yet.  The mobile Barclaycard app allowed me to confirm that no, it hadn’t.

‘Do you mind if I call to check tomorrow?’ the lady asked.

‘Of course not, speak then’ I replied.

Overnight the credit duly appeared – for the £164.94 – and I was happy to confirm this when she called about it the next morning.

Of course, they hadn’t paid the Court Fee, which they are supposed to do, but I am promised this by tomorrow.

No apology of course, no ‘We’re sorry this happened to you’, nada.

But honestly, I’m happy just to get the cash back.

So, what happens today? I get my statement from the card to which the Supercard is linked showing a £12 fee for going over my limit. Yes, that’s right it happened when all the fraud occurred on my account. I fear a letter is going to need to be written.

So tips – turn your Supercard on and off when you go away. Or use your card and suck up the exchange fees.