Bank mess up, credit rating screwed!

princeofpounds

OK, I am posting this to seek advice for a friend. I have a rough idea of what to do but hoping there are few wise heads here who can help.

She lost her cards mid-december and rang up the bank to cancel them and ask for new ones to be issued.

The bank removed the direct debit she had set up from her debit card to pay off her 2 credit cards without telling her, so a couple of non-payments were registered before she knew about it.

Her bank then changed her address (unilaterally!) over the Christmas period from her current address to a mix of her current and old address. As a result, some new cards and statements went to a different house.

Lo and behold, the cards are used.

So she now has wound up with a screwed credit record and more fraud on her cards.

The bank are refusing to admit any responsibility so far, merely saying they are 'investigating'.

My question is - how should she sort this out?

[Deleted User]

Let them do their investigation and see what transpires. They may remove the late payment markers if they consider if their fault. Then you will know whether you need to take more action.

And report the fraud formally if not already done so.

pqrdef

To be honest, some bits of this yarn look a bit fishy. Banks deal with lost cards every day. They don't arbitrarily cancel Direct Debits and change addresses for no reason.

princeofpounds

To be honest, some bits of this yarn look a bit fishy. Banks deal with lost cards every day. They don't arbitrarily cancel Direct Debits and change addresses for no reason.

No, trust me, it's not fishy. I know enough about the case.

For example, in the case of the direct debit the conversation was like this:

'what happened to my direct debit'
'you cancelled it'
'no I didn't, when did I do that?'
'sorry, we don't have any record of that'
'so you don't have any record of me cancelling the direct debit at all?'
'no ummm... we are investigating'

I actually got a bit more information about the situation just now.

It seems the worry is not so much the loss of money on the new cards (they were stopped quite quickly) but the credit rating problem caused by the fact that the bank took it upon itself to dismantle her direct debit.

The balance outstanding was small, there was more than enough money in the current account to cover it, but of course the minimum payment wasn't made.

Degenerate

pqrdef wrote: »

To be honest, some bits of this yarn look a bit fishy. Banks deal with lost cards every day. They don't arbitrarily cancel Direct Debits and change addresses for no reason.

Santander do both for the reason of incompetence.

princeofpounds

One of the reasons I know it's not fishy is that the bank have form!

They have already cancelled all her cards spontaneously twice (no fraud or anything, just stopped them and re-issued without any warning) in the past.

They also once on these occasions rang her up to warn her that the card had been used fradulently and to ask what she had done with it etc when it was still sitting sealed in the envelope, all security features intact, on the mantelpiece barely a couple of hours after it arrived. I was there at the time.

Of course now the question is why did she stick with them at all, but I don't think she saw this coming and the stuff before was just an inconvenience.