Lloyds Bank - Unauthorised transfer

hippey

I bank with Lloyds, and having had a couple of problems with my Debit Card I called into the branch on Friday.

A very young man on the reception happilly looked up the details of my account and could find no issues. However as he was kindly showing me various screens, he clicked on a 'notepad' which showed a transfer on 26 May for £600 that had been set up in error the deleted.

When I asked who had done this, he went a bright shade of red, as he turned the monitor round and the last few lines which I only caught a glimpse of started on about fraud. He clammed up and thrust a complaints leaflet in my hand and said he couldn't deal with it and I had to call 'Customer Retentions' on an 0845 number.

So , are they saying I'm doing something, or did someone try and take out £600?? He would not tell me. Well, I called the call centre, only to be told 'nothing is wrong' and had to push some more to find out what was written about me, quoted "Subject Access Request" and things started to come out the woodwork.

Apparently on the 26 May, a call centre agent set up & transfered £600 to someones account, this was picked up and reversed and the transaction deleted, however apparently a notepad entry below this by thier supervisor suggested that it was not fraud just a mistake. My question was how? The answer I am still waiting for!

Yes, someone could have a similar account number to me, but the name, and other security questions should be different, as I'm always told they can't proceed without identifying me. But how did they manage it? Or are some staff trying to do stuff on customers accounts without the customers knowledge? And even then why me?

Andy_Ches

The bank I used to work for went into a completely seperate screen to transfer funds where the account numbers had to be entered manually.

So it may just be a genuine error.

withnell

You don't really have a point to argue, as it hasn't had any effect on you - it's only because you happened to see the screen that you ever knew.

I'm sure everyone's had a !!!!-up in whatever their line of work is, that was then put right and the customer never knew about!

Extant

A lot of places will have funds transfer "split off" from regular account actions, and I'd hazard a guess that they entered in the wrong sort code to transfer from, and just happened to hit a different one that had the same account allocation style on it.

AndyInYorks

BarclaysManager wrote: »

A lot of places will have funds transfer "split off" from regular account actions, and I'd hazard a guess that they entered in the wrong sort code to transfer from, and just happened to hit a different one that had the same account allocation style on it.

Another common error I see is when the member of staff doesn't clear the screen properly or copies/pastes the wrong account number into the transfer screen. Did you call telephone banking for anything at all that day? If so this might be what happened.

At least it proves that they have proper checks and controls in place, since they found the error and rectified it.

doelani

It soundslike it has been a error by a member of staff, I used to work for a bank in a call centre and do remember doing this one day by typing in the wrong account number and realising right away when checking the transaction, it was corrected immediatly and although would not have shown on customers statements as it was corrected it would still ahve been noted on accout and would have been traceable.

dc110

Reiterating some of what has been said but when I worked for a bank we had to manually input acc details for transfers so mistakes could be made.

It was rectified and no harm done. Wouldnt think you have anything to worry about.

I'll make no comment about the cashier who decided to fob you off to 'customer retentions'

hippey

Thanks for the replies. I actually do deal in this area, but was suprised by the attitude of the customer advisor in how they dealt with it.

I have a number of conversation on the subject yesterday, and to be honest if staff at LTSB had put their hands up and say they made a mistake then I would have been happy, it was the sudden coverup which made be suspect it was something more.

I know its possible to have the same account number at different sortcodes and that these things happen, but it's how you deal with it should a customer find out, the impression I had when I left the branch is that LTSB were closing my account due to fraud, the call centre did explain it far better and said that the branch advisor was wrong for asking me to call customer retentions.

doelani

yes I can see your point about how staff dealt with it, mistakes do happen but a lot of banks do not want customers to know " human error" happens lol