BEWARE, ABSA clients!

On Sunday 20th October, my wife's purse was ****** out of her handbag in Reading, UK. Inside the purse were two bank cards: an English bank card, and an ABSA credit card (in both cases, a secondary card, as the accounts are in my name, and I have the main card). Within fifteen minutes, four transactions had been made, two on each. I was aware of the *****ulent activity on my UK card account, as the bank notified me, immediately. At the same time, my wife realized her purse had been ******. I realized, then, that the secondary ABSA credit card was in danger, so I logged in to my account: sure enough, two *****ulent transactions had been made. I immediately froze my card. The ABSA website provided the opportunity to authorize continued use of the secondary card, after I had frozen the main card: obviously, I declined to tick that box. The UK froze my card, refusing to allow the second attempted transaction to be processed. They subsequently reimbursed me for the first *****ulent transaction. However, the ABSA secondary credit card transactions continued: another dozen or so on Sunday. Although I was very apprehensive, and confused, because I thought further attempted transactions would be blocked, I was confident that I had frozen my card, and assumed that meant no transactions on the secondary card would be honoured. I also wondered how it was that someone was able to use the ABSA secondary card, freely, without a pin being required - even, it seems, withdrawing cash at ATMs. I was pretty sure that these transactions would not be cleared by ABSA, as I had frozen my card - and the transactions were very suspicious. My wife and I had not used our credit cards for a couple of weeks, so a sudden spate of transactions within twelve hours would have alerted anyone who was doing their job properly. The next morning, after another two *****ulent transactions, I phoned the ABSA ***** Dept. The man I spoke to stopped the secondary card, gave me a case number, and said someone from the department would call me, on my UK cellphone, after I had supp**** the number. To date, I have had no communication from the ABSA ***** Dept. All the transactions were approved by ABSA, by Tuesday and, as it stands, I am responsible for paying just over R15,000.00, for *****ulent transactions that ABSA made no effort to block or, at least, to query. Do YOU want to trust ABSA to look after YOUR best financial interests, if someone can use a ****** secondary credit card freely, although the main card has been frozen? And no pin is required to make purchases, and withdraw cash? A significant fault, with regard to the ABSA site, is that NO FACILITY is available to FREEZE or STOP a secondary card. (Please note: my SA mobile number is not active at the moment, as I am in the UK. My UK number is ***.)