Locked out of Natwest accounts

6am

We sold our house and received money from solicitors into the current account. I started to move money around, made transfer to e-saving, made transfer to another account in the different bank. This transfer was stopped by fraud team for some reason, the next day they blocked my online banking account. I called them and they told me to go into branch and show id. The branch people did not like my id (driving licence), because it showed an old address and we informed Natwest about the change of address several days before that. We even showed them letter they gave us that confirmed the change of address. My passport has expired and I am in process of updating it which can take several weeks. Driving licence needs updating as well (I need to change address). So I basically lost access to online banking, lost access to (not so instant now) e-saving account, I cannot transfer proceeds of sale to a different bank to repay the mortgage on our current house. It seems that direct debits still work, and I can pay with the debit card and make small withdrawals. Natwest is not interested in helping. Fraud team said that the bank will not entertain complaint until my account is unlocked. Any advice apart from waiting for several weeks to sort ids?

agrinnall

It's of no immediate help to you but this is one of the reasons why you should not put all of your eggs into one banking basket, but have accounts at more than one financial institution.

mt99

If it's any comfort I had exactly the same thing with Lloyds I had to go in the branch and show them my passport which luckily was up to date etc so they unlocked.

however even the branch person who helped me and who called the fraud team had to scramble around find some ID to prove that she was actually from the branch!

you can definitely claim compensation after they have unlocked the account