Fraudulent banking transactions: Tell the FSA Consumer Panel your views

John_Pierpoint

I've noticed that when it is the bank's money at risk (Credit card) then the rules are much stiffer than when it is your money at risk (Debit card).

Same thing happens on-line; when my credit card(s) get rejected, the debit card will be accepted.

Nationwide said to me "Oh you don't need to tell us about that" (debit card) before putting me through to the credit card security section. In the event the third world country banks were a bit iffy about accepting my debit card - though they had enough different brands of bank to overcome the potential problems (though some charged a transaction fee).

donstyles

We had over £1800 taken from our current account on 6 May 2010
Luckily I discovered this the next day by accessing my account on-;ine
My wife immediately telephoned the bank and spoke to a very helpful lady who
said she would send a Declaration document for us to sign and return to the bank
She also gave my wife the number of the Co, whose name appeared as the recipient
They told her that person called Harris used it to buy a digital camera
The missing money was paid back into our account by the Co on 12 May
with no explanation. Today !3 May we received the declaration from the bank.
My wife rang the No on the letter and explained the money had been returned.
They were quite surprised as this was quite unusual.but no need to do anything
else.
Our bank is Natwest and we are happy with their response to what was a very worrying happening to 2 OAPs
Don Styles

James

Maybe victims should be asking the FSA Consumers Panel to pose the following questions to the Banking & Card Industry.

1. Into whose account has my money gone?
2. Does that Bank Know Their Customer (at question 1)
3. Will my Bank be open and honest in telling me how this crime was perpetrated?
4. Why doesn’t VISA, MasterCard etc Police websites who display their logos?
5. Can the Bank assure me that this Crime will be reported to the Police?

Vicky82

• Have you had someone take money from your bank account without your knowledge? Yes

• When was this? April 2009 (approx)

• What was your bank's response when you raised this with them? They (A&L) contacted me the morning it happened. Around £800 had been taken over various transactions

• Did your bank refund the money taken? Yes and all charges as I ended up going over drawn

• If you did get your money back how long did it take? about 2 days

• Was the bank helpful in its response? Very helpful. They helped me transfer some money from my savings account to cover any direct debits that would be coming off, and told me if I later found I needed to get some cash out that I coud go into any branch with ID and they would be able to help me.

• What could, or should it have done better? nothing

mchandlerhaynes

I bank with A&L. I logged onto my hotmail one Saturday morning in January to find notification from my Verified by Visa account saying that my password had been changed successfully the previous night - obviously not by me! After checking my account I phoned my bank to find that several payments had been applied for, one of which the bank were already suspicious of and had declined the transaction. Initially the lady I spoke to said that I must have given out my card or that my husband must have used it. She then said that I must have given out my DOB, address, card security code and passwords!! All of which I hadn't. Eventually she agreed to look into it and the money was refunded within 1-2 days. However, a few days later the same fraudulent company had applied for another payment which had been authorised!! I phoned the bank again who said that it must have been an assistant error and I believe it was the bank who gave me the money back as it was their error. Obviously all of my cards had to be cancelled and I was informed that whilst I was waiting for them to arrive I would be able to cash cheques at the post office if I phoned my bank first for them to arrange authorisation with the PO. I did this once, withdrawing £50 from my account. A week later I had an additional £50 taken from my account and again phoned up to find out what was going on. It seems this time there had been a 'systems' error and that the cheque had been charged to my account twice in error. I, very calmly, expressed that I was very disillusioned with A&L and that I felt that my money wasn't safe with them and that there was obviously issues with their banking security. I explained that I could understand the assistant error (accidentally paying the fraudulent trans), we're all human after all but that a systems error to me was more serious - how many times could that have happened, not just to me? Marie, with a very unpleasant attitude, instantly offered to put me through to closures and if I was unhappy I'd obviously want to close my account with them!! I was actually looking for some kind of assurance that this wouldn't happen again!! I told her I would take some time to consider whether or I wanted to continue banking with them.
I had many more applications to my account, they attempted several more times to change my verified by visa password. I phoned the bank to ask again what was going on but they explained that they wanted to allow the fraudsters to continue their activity in an attempt to trace them but that no further monies would be deducted from my account.
All in all, a very unpleasant experience and although the situation is now resolved, I undoubtedly think that the situation could have been made much less unpleasant had A&L staff been helpful, sympathetic, fully trained and competent.

LondonDiva

LondonDiva wrote: »

· Have you had someone take money from your bank account without your knowledge? - My elderly mother has

· When was this? 2008 & 2009

· What was your bank's response when you raised this with them?

They were both fraudulent purchases on Amazon.co.uk with the same card details. On both occasions, Halifax and Amazon were uninterested and alleged that she had made the purchases herself. On the second occasion she was out of the country, but the bank and Amazon insisted that she had made the purchases.

The bank’s fraud line insisted that she go to the branch, the head office refused to talk to the branch and both Amazon and Halifax insisted that she go to the police before they would do anything.

When I asked them to verify the email address and address the purchases had been sent to, they refused due to data protection. When I asked how they could refuse this given that my mother had apparently made the purchase, they said they didn’t have to explain.

It was only when I kicked up a fuss and started sending emails to the directors / CEO that anybody bothered to respond from the bank. Then all they did was refund the money. Halifax refused to tell me if the account was compromised, if my mother needed a new card or information or if it was the same email and physical address used the last time the fraud occurred.

I contacted them again to ask for an update and Halifax said – well, the money’s come back what more do you need? When I insisted, they said there would be criminal action taken, but 10 or so months on, despite promises and signing statements, they have not updated us about the outcome of the fraud.

· Did your bank refund the money taken? Eventually refunded by Amazon not the bank, and only after I sent an email or two a day to everyone on the board.

· If you did get your money back how long did it take? About a week

· Was the bank helpful in its response? Denied any responsibility for the matter, insisted that it was up to the customer & retailer to sort out the fraud and that the FSA would not help because this was not in their remit. I contacted the police who said this should be dealt with by the bank.

Was passed from pillar to post by the bank and different staff said different things depending on their mood.

· What could, or should it have done better? The FSA should publicise the banks’ reasonable responsibilities in these situations so that customers can have clear expectations of service and response times to measure the service received by.

Halifax were deliberately obstructive and my mother went between the branch and call centre about 6 times before I found out about the latest fraud. She told me the last time it had been so bad that she had stopped chasing for the money to be refunded because the bank insisted she must have ordered online without realising it.

There is an expectation that the police or and take such matters seriously and it’s depressing and unacceptable to find all organisations involved washing their hands of their customers, because some unknown person will eventually deal with it.

Just chased this up with Halifax and despite promising to contact me after they had investigated the fraud, they've told me that because Amazon refunded the money, they were under no obligation to do anything about it. If I was that bothered, I should have gone to the police myself.

When I pointed out that the police asked me to get the bank to report it, I was told it was not policy to report or investigate such crimes, as the file was now closed due to the refund.

Apparently the person I spoke to last year who assurred me that this would be investigated and I would be informed of the outcome was making it up and I have no rights in expecting the bank to get to the bottom of the second time this has happened.

Good to know my money's in safe hands!

John_Pierpoint

You cannot report it to the police, probably because such actions were highlighting that fraud is now the worlds largest crime and making a mess of the statistics that show just how tough the government was being on crime and the causes of crime.

VictimOfImpersonation

My bank has offered me a product which in the small print tells me that the £69.99 per year that I would pay is broken down in the tabled information to be found in their policy small print as shown below. I always find it amazing what the insurer (underwriter) gets out of these deals compared to what the arranger/introducer takes from the deal. I bet there is 5% IPT to be paid to the government on the £11.60 too! My guess then is that out of the £69.99 you pay, only £11.05 reaches the insurer to cover their expenses and of course, the claims costs. That makes the introducer's fee (commission if you like) a whopping 84% of the premium before tax. Now then, notice that I said that my bank offered me this. Do you think that 84% all stays with CPP? And do you really think that any insurer taking on new business at the rate of £11 per head is going to willingly let itself cough up £60,000 in one claim? Dream on :mad:

I think the "For its fee" section of small print is missing a point (iv) will have its arm twisted and pay away a handsome chunk of their ill gotten fee to any bank that wants to introduce customers to CPP for the purposes of selling this dodgy insurance product

What do others think? This is part of the point I made earlier about banks just seeing ID fraud as an opportunity for greater turnover and profit for them. The FSA should stamp on practises like this, and screw them into the dirt with their metalled toe.


Your payment £69.99 This is the total amount you pay, broken down as follows:
Fee payable to CPP £58.39 See ‘Your contract with CPP’ for a description of what this pays for
Premium payable to the Insurer, Homecare £11.60 See ‘Your policy with the Insurer’ for a description of what this pays for
Your contract with CPP
For its fee, CPP will, each year:
i) act as intermediary by introducing you to Homecare and its product;
ii) act as intermediary in connection with the making of your contract with Homecare;
iii) collect payments due from you and pay the premium to Homecare on your behalf.




Edit 21st May:

I have just received a Credit File alert.

I wasn't overly concerned because yesterday I made an online current account application and I thought that clearly it had been picked up.

Not a bit of it. There were two new entries, one a deleted old search from another bank, and a new CIFAS entry ... a one word entry description "Conversion" :eek: :mad:

I called CIFAS on the only number they publish which is 0330 1000 0180.

They said they are "simply a registration line, they are an outsourced organisation" and CIFAS themselves publish no telephone number.

They refused to tell me
(a) Exactly what a Conversion entry means and how serious it is (I think it is very serious because Conversion Fraud relates directly to an accusation against the data subject as opposed to other types of entry e.g. Account Takeover or Impersonation which clearly shows the data subject is the victim.

(b) Anything at all about the data against my name including of course which of their banking industry members made the entry.


I have learned a lot since becoming an Identity Fraud Victim and my latest learning is that, contrary to what I have been telling people who ask about Identity Fraud Protection, CIFAS have this morning been not at all useful, their Customer Service is non-existent (see (a) and (b) above), they are shady (no direct telephone contact possible) and the involvement of their members in relation to my data are self-evidently downright dangerous (witness my credit file today).


Further update 21st May:
I decided to call Equifax since I could get nowhere with CIFAS. It appears (it is not yet 100% certain) that Equifax had received the entry not from a banking member but from CallCredit (the 'also-ran' #3 credit reference agency in the UK). And since the entry by CallCredit was simply another "VictimOfImpersonation" report, the word "Conversion" seems to relate not to Conversion Fraud, but to data from CallCredit "converted" to Equifax. D'OH!!!!!!! I ask you, how can these assumed protectors of our data and reputations be taken seriously?? Such sloppy use of the word "Conversion" in direct relation to a data entry about fraud. Makes my blood boil !

climbintheladderouttadebt

Within the last couple of months, a charge of £30 was applied to my account for an 'o2 top-up'. I'm with 3 on contract. This was nothing to do with me. We're on a very tight budget atm and luckily try to keep a small buffer in my account just in case. I check my online banking daily.

I'd used the account twice online that week, once for a magazine subscription and once for a craft club subscription. I'm guessing this is where someone got my details from.

I'm with A&L, so called them, they were very helpful and acted swiftly. My card was cancelled and a new one issued. I was overall very happy, but was at a loss for 10 days with no bank card and a need for my card because of my pregnancy!

The money was returned within 48 hours. I'm just glad I didn't need it otherwise this would have been very difficult!

Strangely, however, just after the Santander switchover, o2 credited my account with £30, which A&L reversed a day later. Not sure what that was about?!

malc_b

This is slightly off topic but relevant.

One of the ways people lose money is by being scammed by phishing emails and entering their details into a fake web site. So why do banks on the one hand tell us to be careful and on the other hand, like the email I got from Egg this morning, tell us to click here and enter our details to be entered in a draw.

The Egg email could very easily have been a scam. It offered a prize as incentive, and it asked me to click this link then enter my details. It did offer an alternative of my logging in as normal and clicking the link on the right of my normal page. Except that didn't work as there was no link on the right. I even had to check the email was legit. The URLs looked ok to me but since the alternate method failed I was suspicious and it could so easily have been a scam.

If the banks want customer to take care then surely they should not send out email like this. It's just asking for a scammer to copy this email, change the links, and wait for the money to roll in :eek: