Advice needed on potential fraud(?) - someone changed our address in the bank

eldaniel

Hi,
Over a year ago my wife opened saving account with one particular bank. She received all the initial post from them and nothing else for a long time as interests are yearly. Email came through that new tax certificate is available. We looked at that and to our shock there was my wife's name but completely random address (somewhere in London) and we never lived in a proximity of this address. My wife rang them quickly and they promised to call her back. They did and said that someone (possibly with similar surname) changed it in one of the branches in London in June this year, but they are sure it was done by the error. !!!!!!?! We have very rare surname. Surely they have to verify more than a surname to do a change like that... I could not believe what am I hearing. Even if it would be a fraud, money can only be taken after 18 months when account is closed completely, so how can I be sure. Surely they don't have CCTV from that period anymore to verify who that was or what was the true intention of the person?! I wrote a complain through secure message but all I got was the answer that they will call my wife back (which was referring to phone call she already had from bank).
What should I do? Can/should I report it somewhere? I think that is a enormous mistake on behalf of the bank and they should not get away lightly with making mistakes like that (assuming that we believe them that this was really only an error).
Thanks

colsten

You should do nothing with the bank as the account is in your wife's name, and she needs to communicate with the bank. She can raise a formal complaint if she is unhappy about the responses she got so far. The complaints process will be described on the bank's website.

Flobberchops

Was any money withdrawn, or any other unauthorised activity (changing/resetting passwords, sending out cards, etc)? If so, you should consider it fraud.

If it's just the change of address it could indeed just be an error - admittedly one that could have had grave consequences.

Securing a change of address is integral to account takeover fraud and Particular Bank Plc (never heard of them) should be both keenly aware of this and have systems in place to make this difficult to do. Now, I don't know what kind of identification and verification system this bank has, but I can make a reasonable guess that in the absence of a bank card, as may well be the case for a savings product, there are legitimate ways to access the account that don't involve the account holder presenting their card and PIN at the counter.

One of the identification options may be a search by surname - and in this case a rare surname may actually be a disadvantage as it could result in a bigger "false positive". Say for argument's sake your surname is Poncenby-Smythe; a completely different customer named Poncenby-Smythe comes to the counter asking to be ID'd, the cashier types in the name and by error your wife's name appears instead. The cashier clicks on this customer file convinced they must have the correct customer in front of them since it's such an unusual name. Now suppose the cashier is searching for the name Smith - a much more common name so they're now looking at a screen with two dozen Smiths on it. They'd pay much more attention to the first name to make sure they identified the correct person.

What this doesn't explain is how this person was able to bypass verification - they surely would have a different signature to your wife, a different date of birth, and would have different security questions. If the bank cashier or phone operater at Particular Bank was doing their job properly they would have noticed this mismatch and not allowed the enquiry to go any further. It's on this point that I think you could say the bank has demonstrably failed your wife, even if the change of details turns out to be accidental and completely benign. It's proof that this bank just isn't taking their customer's safety seriously enough, and if I were you I'd bang this fact over their heads until they paid out compensation like a one-armed bandit machine (you've been kind enough to not name and shame them... yet). When your wife's savings mature withdraw the lot and decline to give this bank your business in future. I think that about covers it?

[edit] Colsten is quite correct - replace all instances of "you" in this post with "your wife", since she's the account holder.

eldaniel

It is a joint saving account but address was changed only for her. My one is still correct. When I say "I" or "we" it is because I deal with all the finances at home but she obviously calls the bank etc. They would not want to talk to me.
Definitely no custom from me after 18months. I just hope it was in fact error.

robatwork

To boil it down:
Savings as expected - bank error
Savings depleted - fraud

zolablue25

This happened to us twice with the Halifax and both times new cards were requested to be sent to the new addresses. Despite this, nobody was interested. Halifax really couldn't have cared less and neither could Action Fraud (as I managed to flag it before any funds were taken). The new addresses were firstly in Bristol and secondly London.

maninthestreet

Something similar happened to me - someone with the same surname and first initial as me (I have a very common surname) submitted an address change request and my account was mis-identified as the account to which the address change request should be applied.