Sir.-I write in response to Mrs O Fendle's letter in last Friday's Gazette.

I am a sales assistant at a retail store in Basingstoke. Part of my job is to spot and identify fraudulent credit and debit cards when I take payment.

In my career (one-and-a-half years) in retail, I have spotted seven stolen or copied cards and have stopped £8,000 worth of transactions.

I have even chased a thief out of the store to recover the stolen card, against all recommendation.

Through this action, I was almost stabbed in the car park. The card was recovered and cancelled by the store.

Members of the team that I work with have similar stories. Many Basingstoke retailers put a lot of effort into stopping this sort of theft from happening.

It is often hard to take ID because, if this was a copied card, they will have planned for this and will have often manufactured fake documents to hand over.

You would be surprised how many security checks are carried out by retailers, but even with this in place, it is still very hard to spot a fraudulent card.

From February this year, stores lose the money if a fraudulent card is processed. This makes our job harder because of the pressure to stop this from happening.

My recommendation to everyone is to keep track of your accounts. As soon as you realise that something is wrong, get the card stopped.

This means that people do not have to take any risks and it makes the thieves' lives harder.

-Name and address withheld.