Fraud Bank issues. Seeking advice

robin.last81

Good morning.
I awoke this morning to find out that I had nil in my account after 28 transactions were made to my account yesterday. These transactions were all made at boohoo.com ranging from £25 to £48 each.
I am currently with Bank of Scotland and contacted them immediately telling them that these were fraudulent transactions. To their credit I was immediately passed to their Fraud team and the Agent was very polite and helpful. However when i questioned them how this was possible (that so many transactions could take place without my wife or myself being contacted) he said that there were alerts on the system and that the system had tried to send out a message, however they had ALL failed! They had apparently come back with an 'error' however every subsequent transaction was still authorised!?
The total that was spent on the site was £1,100+!
The agent didn't have access to give me anymore details regarding the error, but did confirm that they do have our correct contact information. I work in IT, in the infrastructure team, and cannot believe that there is no fail safe for occasions like this, surely if the system brings up an error it should block any further transactions being made.
I have raised a complaint and am waiting for a manager to contact me back (up to 48hrs!) but they have also said that I will have to wait between 3-5days for the bank to get the money back (out of their control apparently) and then up to 24hrs to get the money credited back into my account.
This has caused a huge amount of stress, with my wife calling me extremely distressed, and I wanted to ask if anyone had any advice as to what would be the next best step for me to take, as this imho, a huge failure on their side! What if I had 10X the amount in my account, I don't see how this would've ever been stopped until I noticed!

Thank you in advance and apologies if I raised this in the wrong area!

Best regards,

Robin

eskbanker

robin.last81 wrote: »

I have raised a complaint and am waiting for a manager to contact me back (up to 48hrs!) but they have also said that I will have to wait between 3-5days for the bank to get the money back (out of their control apparently) and then up to 24hrs to get the money credited back into my account.

You might wish to quote the FCA guidance to them:

If you notice a payment out of your account that you did not authorise, you should contact your bank immediately.

If you did not authorise a particular payment you can claim a refund.

In most cases the bank must refund the payment without undue delay and by the end of the business day following the day on which it became aware of the problem, unless it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that you have acted fraudulently.

Your bank may ask you to answer some questions and fill out a form confirming what has happened, but it cannot delay your refund while it waits for you to return the form.

Terry_Towelling

Obvious thing that comes to mind is to get straight on to boohoo.com and tell them not to send out any goods in relation to the transactions because you didn't make them. Leave the complaining until afterwards.

jonnygee2

Eskbanker is right. Your bank must refund you by end of day tomorrow. If they aren't doing this, they must give you a reason that they need more time to investigate.

They've already technically breached the rules by telling you it will take more than this. But, as everyone makes mistakes, I'd give them one more chance by prompting them on the rules.

If the money is not back in your account tomorrow after a reminder of FCA rules, or they tell you again it will take three days, I would ask to make a formal complaint and be seeking compensation for the level of service. You are out £1,100 and are under a lot of stress because of their sloppy knowledge of basic regulation - so take action!

However when i questioned them how this was possible (that so many transactions could take place without my wife or myself being contacted) he said that there were alerts on the system and that the system had tried to send out a message, however they had ALL failed!

On this part I wouldn't worry too much though. These frauds happen, banks are constantly rewriting their prevention algorithms and cunning thieves are constantly updating their programs to circumvent them. It's a very tricky balance - you'd be equally annoyed if your legitimate online shopping spree was interrupted by random card declines.

Fraud happens, the point is its the bank that's liable and they have to refund you within 24 hours so it's not really the customers problem.