Both my girlfriend and I have been charged £2.95 on our bank accounts by "v-store.co.uk", for no apparent reason. We have not bought anything from the Vodafone online store and not bought anything over WAP, absolutely nothing at all. We have completely separate bank accounts, so surely we can't have been the victims of fraud at exactly the same time. Worringly though, £2.95 is the Vodafone standard postage charge, so for example somebody could have used our details to buy a "free phone" contract and that would be the only charge that would show up?

Incredibly, Vodafone offered no explanaton over the phone, basically suggesting we had both "accidently" bought something through Vodafone Live or on the internet... give me a break.

Anyone got any ideas at all? Has anyone else had this recently?

How have Vodafone charged you this amount?

The pnly methods I can currently think of are by Direct Debit or by Payment Card(Debit Card)

Either way, contact your bank immediately and put the transaction 'in dispute'. This means that you tell the bank that you do not recognise the transaction.

If it was by Direct Debit, you should ensure that the DD mandate is cancelled immediately - your bank will do this for you if you request - and ask for an immediate refund under the terms of the DD guarantee.

If the debit is via a Debit Card then explain the issue to your bank - they should be able to offer you some advice.

Good Luck!

you didn't order one of the 'free' SIM cards they were offing a while back did you? They charged for P&P on these (not the 1st lot at christmas but offers afterwards).

If not, get on to your bank and dispute the charge.

The transaction was a Debit Card transaction, I'll get onto Lloyds TSB and see what they have to say. I'll also check that no new Direct Debits have been set up. The fact that it was a Debit Card transaction makes it even more worrying, as that would mean the use of our cards or at least the numbers of our cards. I had heard about this free SIM offer, neither of us bothered with it though.

Vodafone's attempted help on the phone was laughable - they had a customer phoning them, worried that someone had used their debit card to buy something on their website, and all they could say was that perhaps we both "accidently" bought something ourselves. They couldn't even find out exactly where, when or who, or what was actually bought...