Vanquis - Fraud and locked account

mancini601

:mad: Just had a rather heated phone conversation with Vanquis regarding my credit card.

I have made some purchases as per normal over the last week or so. On Saturday, I added up my receipts and sent a payment from my bank (as normal) to clear my account.

Just happened to call their automated service tonight to check my balance and got transferred to a person who then goes on to tell me that my account is frozen due to suspected fraud. I enquired what this fraud was and she said 'hang on, I will check the notes on your account'. She then told me that I had placed my account in Credit and that I was in breach of the terms and Conditions.

All I did was pay off my balance. She seemed to indicate that they received my payment before all debit transactions had actually been fully applied to my account.

The Fraud Team are calling me tomorrow and will want according to the lady:

Proof of my name and address
A bank statement showing the electronic payment I made
A full explanation as to why I placed the account in credit.

She then stated that unless all of the above was satisfactory, they may close my account!!!:mad::mad::mad:

izools

My god... Vanquis are getting worse it seems. Who knew it could happen!!

I think it best to set up a direct debit for the full amount rather than paying as you make the transactions to save from this ever happening again.

How long have you been with them? You think your credit might be good enough now to look elsewhere?

mancini601

Unfortunately I am not yet in a position to obtain a mainstream card.

What annoys me the most is

A: No one bothered to call me to let me know what was going on, I only found out by innocently calling them for a balance enquiry
B: Because I had no idea what was happening, I could've been in a shop or anywhere such as filling the car with petrol and the card would've been declined (the fact that I have bank cards is neither here nor there)
C: Some of my transactions were well over a week ago and were showing as 'pending' when I checked my balance last week as my available balance had reduced by what I had spent, so come last Saturday I assumed all would've gone through so paid my card off.

izools

You are absolutely right. I've had similar experiences with Vanquis as has my other half.

We've currently got two outstanding complaints with my OH's vanquis card, one of which has been referred to the FOS.

The first complaint is that they promised an APR reduction to 39.9% when he was upgraded to "Gold" in February, which never happened, and not only that but they increased his APR from 59.9% to 69.9% in August because of a "Breach of Conditions". They haven't been able to confirm what condition he has breached.

The other complaint is that when he opted out of the hike to 69.9% by closing the account and paying off the balance at the old rate, they marked the account as settled on his credit report and created a new account, with only two months of payment history not 23 months like it should have, so I've demanded they put 23 little green [0]s there, not ONE!!

I've had my vanquis card declined before and I was told by them that they have an anti-fraud policy which prevents more than five authorizations to the card in any given day. End of, no leeway, zero tolerance. Can't make more than five purchases a day. Complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

I guess we can agree they are an absolute bunch of crooks; but don't worry, you'll be able to move to something better soon enough. How bad is your credit? Have you considered a Cap 1 classic or Halifax Aqua card? Both are alright with a bit of adverse. Halifax Aqua even approved me even though one of my old defaults was a Halifax One card(!)

mancini601

UPDATE: Spoke to Vanquis today and the lock on my account has been lifted. The issue arose as I 'paid' my balance off to quickly before some of the debits had completely been applied to my account.

They stated that their fraud system simply saw an incoming payment being applied, calulated that I was in a 'positive state' and as such automatically locked the account for fraud detection/prevention.

I explained the transactions etc and the lock was removed without needing all of the information that I was told last night that I would need to provide.

The chap that I spoke to this morning (v helpful) did mention that once flagged, the fraud team should've actually looked at my payment and then checked the pending debit transactions and realised that all was ok.

Oh well. Lesson learned about clearing my balance too early. I did enquire about how long a debit takes to be completely 'applied' to my account.

I.E. The response was..."if you buy something for £100" and you have a limit of say £1000 (currently all clear), the system records from the Point of Sale and earmarks the £100 off your available balance. If you the call the automated service (whilst the item is earmarked) for your balance etc you get...Available Balance £900 and actual balance £0

Two weeks later, if you call again, you get Available Balance £900, actual balance £100. At this point you are safe to pay back the £100....:eek: No No NO...You would think eh? But no. Even if as far as you are concerned the shop has had its money, your balance is £100 (as detailed in the balance check phone call) that all transactions are 'on your account'....No. Vanquis systems still have background tasks that show the transaction as pending.

It is rapidly becoming apparent that the only way to be sure of when you can pay is after you have received your statement.

Sheeshhh!!!