Here's the story.
When my membership was up for renewal in September, I completed my debit
card details and sent the form back.
Shortly afterwards an £32.00 item appeared on my bank statement for
"Printware Southsea". I've never dealt with them and the amount didn't
ring a bell. I found their website and they are a company that supplies
spares and ink for colour printers.
Now I work for the bank, so I popped into the fraud department and said
I'd never dealt with this company. They identified that I'd used my
card at a garage with a history of skimming credit card details, the day
before the Printware transaction. It all looked very fishy, so they
issued a chargeback through VISA, refunded my account and that was that.
The merchant always has the right to appeal against a chargeback, but
nothing happened.
After a few e-mails to the current CTC membership people, it transpires
that the previous CTC membership contractors were using Printware as the
merchant for debit card payments (a fourth party in the transaction?).
I shudder to think how many others have queried the payment and been
refunded.
Oddly, I never noticed that there was never a payment to CTC from my
account. I'd forgotten the amount and assumed it was one of the cheques
that went through that month. In any case, I only check my statement
for things that shouldn't be there, not things that should be there and
aren't!