Santander Fraud, account frozen, any advice welcome

winkybag99

Hi all,

I have had the misfortune to have had my Santander account accessed fraudulently. The thieves transferred all the money from current account out of it and then transferred all the money in my savings account into the current account before transferring that out (a total of just under £5000). I am certain the fraud is no fault of my own (or my wife's) as we are scrupulous about the security of our home computer which is the only place we access are online bank account and have never written down our various passwords etc.

The fraud took 3 days: it started on Friday evening and the last transaction was on the Sunday evening. I received no call or contact from Santander despite the extremely obvious fraudulent nature of this activity. It was not until my Via card was declined on Tuesday morning that I realised something was up, but was looking after a poorly daughter so did not have an opportunity to check my online banking until the evening.

I immediately phoned Santander who told me that they'd shut the account off and initiate a fraud investigations but I would need to go to a branch to prove my identity. I did this the following morning with not TOO many problems.

However I was extremely distressed to be told by the fraud department that the matter could take weeks to resolve, and in the meantime I would be without my £5000, and they would NOT extend my overdraft in order to give me some breathing room. I was assured that the fraud investigator would be in touch with me within 48 hours which has NOT happened.

My question now is what is my next course of action? I am going to phone the fraud department every morning, and tomorrow I will put in a formal complaint (I think they call it a level 2 complaint). Should I do this in writing? At what point would it be useful to contact the Financial Ombudsman?

Apologies for the length of this message, but many thanks in advance for any help and advice offered.

Ben

pcombo

Well the bank can surely tell you where the funds where transferred to.

then u can go to the police with the details and try get the police to trace the fraudster.

It_can_get_better

It's not the same, but i lost my card in Tesco and had £160 stolen within 30 mins before i cancelled it. It wasn't noticed until a month later that a transaction went through 15 seconds before the card was cancelled.

Co-op refunded the money the same day based on what i said on the phone. Seems like your bank aren't being very helpful, in not spotting the fraud and not helping you out when their systems allowed the fraud to take place. Are you going to consider switching to a different bank?

winkybag99

I'm absolutely going to swap. I was an Alliance + Leicester customer but should've changed bank as soon as they got taken over given Santander's appalling customer service record.

pcombo I didn't think it was necessary for me to contact the police, I thought the onus was on the bank in a situation such as this?

Thanks again,

Ben