I've been a victim of a Direct Debit Fraud - Barclay's will not refund me

A bit of speculation -

If I had to guess (and I do stress I'm just guessing here) I imagine that Barclays suspect that your request to pull £25k of money, some of it the best part of a decade old, using the Direct Debit guarantee is either a) an attempt at fraud on your part or b) the actions of a disgruntled customer rather than an unwitting victim of fraud, and notably contractual disputes aren't covered by the guarantee.

The huge sum, plus the timescale involved, would make it understandably difficult for a third party to come to the belief that you were an unwilling and unwitting party to the payments.

If this is honestly a scam or account takeover that you've been affected by, I'd say keep complaining and ask for it to be escalated if your evidence isn't enough for them. Whoever has been taking your money is clearly no amateur and could represent the tip of an organised crime group. Refer to the Ombudsman if all else fails. Did you mention whether you'd notified the police?

Perhaps this should be moved to the E bay board?

Where there is a lot of experienced sellers etc

Paypal can take money from your bank as you agreed to this when giving bank details, some banks put this as a down on statement as DD but it isn't?

It appears you can check your account as below:

Log in to your PayPal account.
Click the 'Settings' icon at the top of the page.
Under 'Payment settings', click Pre-approved payments..
Use the filter to select the seller whose agreement you want to cancel and click Cancel.

Might be useful for some.:)

frank777 wrote: »

Is it o.k to use a Personal Current Account for Business - don't Barclays have an issue with this?

I have to say I was wondering if that was their main beef; maybe the famous 'DD Guarantee' only applies to personal accounts and they feel you've been using it for business (which you clearly have)? Just a thought.

Their next move will almost certainly be to tell you to open a business account for these transactions.

colsten wrote: »

It's probably purchases made by somebody quite close to the OP, paid for from the OP's Paypal account.

I'm inclined to agree. Especially when the below was mentioned, how else would they know how much money they could spend?

tempus31 wrote: »

Sadly yes.
I use paypal extensively around 50 times a day, so they set up a debit and called it paypal which blended in with the normal transactions....
I also use paypal here whilst at work, I may take hundreds of transactions in a day, my monthly statements on the theft debits just says 'PAYPAL' NORMAL DEBIT, so it went unnoticed.
It's only this past year they've raped my account heavily.
Bottom line is it's happened and now need to try and fix whatever I can.

tempus31 wrote: »

Hi
They are direct debits and I cancelled it once i saw an amount leave my account.
All that Barclay's have said is that they could not establish an error returning reason afforded by the direct debit scheme? It's an illegal debit on my account which i never set up or authorised.
I've provided proof they are not my transactions - even after the debit was cancelled the thieves continued to try taking money from my account, which thankfully were halted.
Going through my account now with a fine tooth comb, when I received my medical dismissal severance from my previous employer, they hit my account hard and took thousands out in a few days
If the ombudsman comes back in Barclay's favour - where does that leave me?

So many direct debits, per day, to Paypal, indicate business use, so surely accounts are kept ?


Regarding Paypal, there appears to be a current scam : I received two emails, last week, saying that a payment of 50GBP to [named person] was pending. I had an account years ago, but never used it, so was immediately suspicious and didn't to click the given link , which was to be used to decline the transaction.


I suspect that this link would have asked for bank details and 'know' that no one on here would be silly enough to click , would they ?