MSE News: 'Super-complaint' submitted over protection for bank transfer scam victims 23 September 2016 at 9:46AM in Budgeting & bank accounts 37 replies 4.9K views

Legacy_user

Which? is demanding banks do more to help customers who've lost money after being tricked into making a bank transfer...

Read the full story:
''Super-complaint' submitted to regulator over protection for victims of bank transfer scams'

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agrinnall

You need to be up early in the morning to beat the forum members.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5529796

GingerFurball_2

People shouldn't be compensated for being stupid.

JuicyJesus

This crosses a line - you can't hold a bank responsible for your own instructions, unless you're willing to argue you're not of sound mind.


If someone gets into your account via Internet banking and sends all the money out of it, without any negligence on your part, that's one thing, and your bank should refund you; if you input a sort code and account number and explicitly tell the bank "I want to send £x to this account" then what grounds do you have for then going and saying that you should be refunded?


One of the basic principles of banking is that banks should follow their customers' instructions. It is incumbent on customers to give the right instructions.

badger09

I do have some sympathy for those who have been scammed by the apparently growing method of intercepting email from estate agents, solicitors, builders etc and changing bank details.

However, surely the onus is on the customer to check when they're told in this way that they should send payment to a different bank account:cool: A quick phone call would be enough.

On a wider note, I have been a supporter of Which? for many years but they are becoming increasingly inclined to remove responsibility from individuals and place it on the service provider:(, often, IMHO totally inappropriately.

A sad reflection of society's attitude as a whole.

Ectophile

If this complaint succeeds, does this mean that we should no longer accept bank transfers when selling goods privately (such as a car)?

At the moment, once the money hits your account, it's safe. If the buyer can claim it was fraudulent and grab the cash back, then it would have to be cash only.

Joe_Bloggs

Badger09 Said:-

However, surely the onus is on the customer to check when they're told in this way that they should send payment to a different bank account:cool: A quick phone call would be enough.

This is what vishing scammers plan for. They will intercept and provide this reassurance phone call. The convincing info regarding account transactions can be provided by misguided banking employees working on the inside. Check out vishing and the 'Fizzy' Feezan Hammed trial conviction.

The sensationalist reporting glosses over the inside help, the time it took to do anything about it, and how it was allowed to take place over and over again.

J_B.

badger09

Joe_Bloggs wrote: »

Badger09 Said:-


This is what vishing scammers plan for. They will intercept and provide this reassurance phone call. The convincing info regarding account transactions can be provided by misguided banking employees working on the inside. Check out vishing and the 'Fizzy' Feezan Hammed trial conviction.

The sensationalist reporting glosses over the inside help, the time it took to do anything about it, and how it was allowed to take place over and over again.

J_B.

I am well aware of vishing scams.

However, the scam I described - where payee bank account details are altered by intercepting email sent from the payees account, could very easily be avoided by a simple phone call to check whether that change is genuine.

JuicyJesus

Joe_Bloggs wrote: »

Badger09 Said:-


This is what vishing scammers plan for. They will intercept and provide this reassurance phone call. The convincing info regarding account transactions can be provided by misguided banking employees working on the inside. Check out vishing and the 'Fizzy' Feezan Hammed trial conviction.

The sensationalist reporting glosses over the inside help, the time it took to do anything about it, and how it was allowed to take place over and over again.

J_B.

Perhaps the repeated public reassurances from banks that they will never call you and tell you to log on and move money to another account would be enough to make clear that any such calls are scams?

You'd think after it had been reported again and again and again, people would take notice?

Once again - a bank cannot be held responsible for a customer's instructions. If a customer goes onto its Internet banking service and inputs a sort code and account number to pay some money to, without any interference from the bank itself, why the hell should the bank be responsible for the destination of the money? Its job is strictly limited to the processing of the payment based on the information provided to it.

The other possibility would be that the bank *does* become responsible and therefore would now have the job of intercepting and stopping any payment until it could be confirmed by it over the telephone and customers essentially nannied and prodded - which wouldn't help any actual scam victims anyway because they are often told by scammers to lie about the purpose of the payments, would necessitate a lot of work on both sides of the transaction and make the whole system a lot slower and less useful. Where do we then stop? A bank should stop a customer from using gambling sites because they think they might be an addict? They should become responsible if someone chooses to drink themselves to death because they could have blocked transactions at Bargain Booze?

No. No. No. Again, this is a rubicon that can't be crossed. We've already got it that banks have to make upfront declarations of just about everything that could ever possibly be the subject of a complaint, and some of them make everyone sit through videos when they want to open an account just in case a few years later they decide to become a part of another Martin Lewis crusade, and the idea is now that they also become responsible for the independent f***witted actions of their own customers?

GingerFurball_2

The thing is, banks have systems that will refer of decline payments that seem suspect. There's hundreds of topics on this board where people whinge that the banks are blocking their payments. That's the banks trying to protect their customers money where they refer or block payments that seem like they might be fraudulent.

Joe_Bloggs

@Jucyjesus

You'd think after it had been reported again and again and again, people would take notice?

I never said the offenses were reported. Perhaps there is a record of what was offenses were reported. The reporting of the convictions were [STRIKE]reported[/STRIKE] spun to show expensive cars.

Banks are in position to investigate fraudulent activity. They seldom prosecute themselves.

I don't think banks should be responsible for where the money went. I just think that they should offer up their knowledge of where it went to the alleged wronged consumer.
J_B.