Owners of a fencing firm from Kings Langley are warning fellow traders to be wary of buyers paying for goods over the phone.

IPS fencing, based in Toms Lane, had two orders placed with them in September, for fencing supplies, totalling £5,000.

The buyer, who paid for the items over the phone, asked the company to deliver the order to an address in Leighton Buzzard and the fencing firm obliged.

Five weeks later, Barclaycard contacted IPS Fencing to say that the transaction had not gone through.

Emma Sallow, who owns IPS fencing said: “We were contacted by a man wishing to purchase a large order of fencing goods.

“After a lot of haggling we managed to settle on a price of £5,000.

“From all appearances the client seemed genuine and as a gesture, as we do with many of our other clients, we allowed him to pay for the goods over the phone.

“We undertake a lot of security checks, such as making sure the card details are correct and in this case everything seemed fine.

“However, five weeks later we received a phone call from Barclaycard and were told that the transaction had not gone through as the cardholder claimed not to have ordered or purchased any items from our company.”

In a letter from Barclaycard to Ms Sallow, it stated that they were unable to “reverse or defend chargeback”, due to there not being “signed and imprinted/swiped correspondence, or chip and pin documentary proof that the cardholder participated in this transaction”.

Ms Sallow said she believed that the cardholder had either been subject to identity fraud or had their card used fraudulently. The firm is planning on informing the police.

She said: “It’s almost as if someone has walked in here and just helped themselves to our stock.

“We’re absolutely stunned.

“Not only has our good will been used against us and our business has lost £5,000, but Barclaycard has charged us a processing fee of approximately 2.5 per cent.”

In a statement from Barclaycard, PR manager Andrew Bond said: “This is concerning, however we do warn merchants about the increased risks of transactions not involving the personal presentation of a card.

“Our records show that IPS Fencing carried out a security check on the card, however this check was invalidated when they delivered the goods to a different address than the one checked.

“We’re obviously aware of the fraud threats faced by our customers and in an effort to minimise card fraud Barclaycard Payment Acceptance regularly send education literature to all merchants and in conjunction with the Card Industry a number of fraud tools such as Card Security Code and Address Verification Service have been developed.

“As a gesture of goodwill, Barclaycard has written off the card charges and IPS fencing has received a refund of £65.33.”