Fraud On My Account

tony_cluedo

I noticed the end of last week when I was budgeting for the next few weeks that my account balance didn't add up. The balance and available balance weren't correct. I was on the phone to the bank first thing the next day and they said that a payment had been made for a couple of quid to an online cosmetics place the previous evening then a couple of minutes later a payment was made for over £600 to an online payday loan site. I have never heard of either site let alone used them.

According to the fraud department the payments were still pending. They said it was good they had been informed so soon.

They said that the payment had to go out of my account then they would reimburse it for the amount taken.

By the evening the account balance had returned to normal so I assumed they had stopped the payment.

Just checked the account and the £600 odd payment has been taken out.

My questions are, firstly, why could they not stop the payment before it went out? They said they were unable to do this as the other side would have to stop it.

Secondly, they said that they would immediately reimburse the amount taken and chase the company who took it for it. If they failed to get it they would take the money back off me. Can they do this? As far as I am concerned I alerted them before the payment went out and I can't see how a bank could not block a payment if it was still pending.

This is a Northern Irish bank. I have cancelled the debit card associated with the account.

Cheers.

tom9980

I have a HSBC account.

Last week they rung me up and asked me to confirm payments, all was fine however they were payments that were unusual for my patterns of purchases so they canceled the last one i made to dell for a laptop and blocked and then reissued my card citing card cloning as a reason. I didnt bother to protest because the card was due to be renewed in a few months anyway.

So i guess yes they can block payments if they want to.

agrinnall

It does appear that pending transactions have to leave the account before a refund can be made, it's the subject of many threads on here. I'm not entirely sure why but perhaps it makes it easier for the bank to show fraud if the money actually goes to the recipient.

It is right that in some circumstances they can take the refunded money back from your account, but it's not as simple as them failing to get it back from the recipient. For example, if the recipient immediately withdrew the money as cash and closed the account your bank couldn't reclaim the money through the banking system but that wouldn't be your fault and they couldn't come back to you for it. Basically, if they decide that you either authorised the transaction or were a party to an invalid fraud claim then they can get the money back from you, otherwise they either have to get it from the recipient or write it off. If they do try to get it back from you then you will need to go through their complaints process and if that doesn't work take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Hopefully it won't come to that and they'll just refund you and you'll never hear any more about it.

Richardsct

As an aside I made a purchase on monday and the transaction was authorised as normal but it is still showing as 'pending' surely it would have gone through by now, is this unusual?

agrinnall

Richardsct wrote: »

As an aside I made a purchase on monday and the transaction was authorised as normal but it is still showing as 'pending' surely it would have gone through by now, is this unusual?

Not really, it just means the merchant hasn't requested payment yet. If they don't then the pending status should drop off in around 7 days. The merchant has 6 years in which to claim payment from you, and I believe 6 months in which they can put the original payment request through without notifying you, so make sure you keep the money in your account otherwise it could take you overdrawn.