Lloyds Question

helpme1121

hey all

Just a quick question to see if anyone can offer advice on what I should do.

I receieved my JSA payment last friday (24th). And today when paying for some shopping my card got declined. I thought this was odd, so went to a lloyds cashpoint and tried to withdraw upon which it spat my card back out and said "Unable to process please contact bank" or something along those lines.

I tried to log in to online banking, which it allows me to do with no problem, and money available and balance are both £119.

I then tried to transfer payment to a friend so they could withdraw it for me, and that is also unsuccessful and told me to call a number.

I called the number and they said a block had been put on my account and i had to go in branch. I cant get to a branch today as they are closed now, and i literally have no money at all.

Is there anything i can do? Anytrhing i can say to them to actually find out the issue? Surely they must know, but they are just telling me i need to go in branch for a review or something?

Anyone else experienced this? Help is much appreciated

thanks

matttye

Anyone that can lend you some money until you get this sorted out?

You could try telling the head office what you told us; i.e. that you need your money and have no way of getting into a branch. I doubt it will do any good though. Most call centre staff are trained to be drones.

Hominu

Sounds like your account is under investigation for some reason, you will not get anything out of them until its all sorted.

helpme1121

Unfortunately with most of my friends being students, or having recently just moved out they are pretty stuck for cash too at the moment. Thanks for your advice though.

Anyone else shed some light on this?

Thank you

-edit-

Hominu but i have not received contact or a letter from them? It was working perfectly fine on the Thursday. Now today its not. Surely if my account was under investigation they would of contacted me to let me know?

And if my account was under investigation, surely they would not ask me to go in branch? As they would just continue their investigation until its over? And if that is the case, how come they couldnt tell me that over the phone?

Hominu

It could be considered a "Tip off", which is highly illegal, so much branch staff would say anything other than the real truth.

If they want to ask you questions, they will ask you to go into branch rather than talking to you over the phone.

Of course, it might not be this, but they don't normally block all access to your account for simple misunderstandings.

helpme1121

what did you mean by a "tip off"?

This has confused me, can you explain further please?

matttye

helpme1121 wrote: »

what did you mean by a "tip off"?

This has confused me, can you explain further please?

If the bank suspects money laundering or the police are investigating you for money laundering, they're not allowed to tell you as it would be tipping you off.

Probably the same applies for other offences like fraud.

worried_jim

helpme1121 wrote: »

what did you mean by a "tip off"?

This has confused me, can you explain further please?

Basically- you've done something dodgy and you have been rumbled.

MoneySaverLog

If they suspect fraud / money laundering they cannot tell you by law.

If they do then this is known as "Tipping Off" and can lead to the bank employee being thrown into jail for up to 5 years

jonesMUFCforever

OP can you truthfully say that nothing untoward has been paid into your accounts recently - eg nobody has asked you to do a favour such as paying in a cheque for them or been asked by a mate for a payment to be paid into your account?

MrsPBikerChick

I used to work in an LTSB call centre while at uni (admittedly a few years ago now) and we occasionally got calls with this issue. As it was explained to us, this happened because the bank had placed a block on the account due to suspected fraud/identity theft. Have you had unusually high value or foreign transactions going through your account lately? These can be danger signals to the bank even if they're perfectly legit.

In these situations we had a number for the fraud team customers could call to verify their identity and have the block lifted. Could you try asking for this? Also, when your card was declined it may have given the shop a reason or even the phone number to call - you should always ask this as some shop people don't realise or just don't bother telling you.

Unfortunately unless the powers of the general call centres have changed since I was there they simply can't help you - they don't have the info on why the account is blocked and cannot lift it. They're not being intentionally unhelpful - they just literally can't do anything.

Hope you get it sorted!