NATWEST closed my account and not returning my money.

[Deleted User]

Hello everyone,

On the 05th of march 2020 NatWest has closed both mine and my grandmother’s account without any warnings and explanations and they sent me the letter if I want to reclaim my own money which I have submitted about a month ago.

I am an undergraduate student. I do amazon products review as my part-time business for living I also sell things on eBay and the money goes to my grandmother’s bank account. The reason why it goes to my grandmother’s account is PayPal has limited my account due to getting multiple payments on a single day, therefore, I have contacted eBay and they said I can use anyone’s PayPal account to get payments so I started taking payments to my Grandmother’s PayPal account and from there the money goes to her NatWest account which I have moved it to my NatWest account so this is how I have got the money in my account.

Most of the funds I have earned by doing amazon products review where the sellers provide me rebate after I do my honest review the rebate goes straight on PayPal (Grandmother’s PayPal) and sometimes on Amazon where the transactions can be seen as refunds in my bank account.

I have done 3 formal complaints to them so far regarding the closure of my account and release of my funds.

On the first response, they told me to read their term and condition for closing accounts and funds release can take up to 60 days.

On the 2nd respond, they said the closure of my account remains the same and fund release will take 60 days.

On the 3rd respond, they said the release of my funds has been denied the bank will not be corresponding further regarding this matter.

I have taken permission from my Grandmother to use her account. Both I and my Grandmother does not have any disputes, debts, or negative balance on PayPal and bank accounts.

I have reported it to the Financial Ombudsman Service but due to current pandemic, they will take months to look into my case.

My question is how long can a bank hold your funds legally?

your comments would be greatly appreciated

pogofish

MSE have not however closed the Banking Forum, which you breezed-by on your way here.

daveyjp

So you are running a businesses and depositing money from that business into a third party's bank account.  A few red flags there for the bank to be concerned about.

The account is now probably subject to a full a investigation and until the bank have concluded their investigations there is very little you can do.

Tallaght

What kind of things do you sell on ebay ? Do you have a paypal 'business' account ?

The_Rainmaker

Looks like money laundering (from the bank's perspective).

Cornucopia

Thread moved to Budgeting and Bank Accounts.

notveryeducated

jainil_patel said:

My question is how long can a bank hold your funds legally?

Well, I hate to tell you but in this case it's forever since they've denied access to your funds and said they will not speak to you further about it. You'll just have to wait until the Ombudsman investigates your case and if they uphold your complaint you'll get the money back.

If the Ombudsman sides with NatWest and says they can keep the money then your only option after that is to take legal action against NatWest. 

colsten

The reason why it goes to my grandmother’s account is PayPal has limited my account due to getting multiple payments on a single day,

Paypal limited your account because of multiple payments on a single day?!? But they did not limit your grandmother’s account for receiving multiple payments on a single day?!?

Placitasgirl

It appears to me that the closure could well be due to the fact that you appear to have been using personal accounts for business use, which is probably a breach of Nat West's account Terms and Conditions. You refer to your "business" in your original post so should probably have opened a business account rather than use a personal account for this purpose. 

This, coupled with the numerous transactions could have flagged the account for potential fraud or money laundering. The bank is not permitted to tell you this as that is an offence called "tipping off". 

Either way it appears that the bank considers that you have in some way contravened their terms and conditions or used the account in a way which they are unhappy with. They are perfectly within their rights to close your account and to hold your funds until any investigation is complete. Whether they are ever returned to you will depend on the outcome of that investigation. 

jonnygee2

My question is how long can a bank hold your funds legally?

Not long, at this point the bank is unlikely to still have your money.

In these instances the funds will have been returned to source, that is to say, they will have been returned to wherever the payments originated from.

There's no point contacting or complaining to the bank because they will no longer have control of your money. There is nothing further you can do, the money is gone.

You'll just have to wait until the Ombudsman investigates your case and if they uphold your complaint you'll get the money back.

The ombudsman has no jurisdiction at all over this, they cannot initiate any return of funds here.

george9071

To be honest i am not surprised that they closed down your account. You were using your account for business purposes if you was getting a lot of transactions going through. About your refund i would just wait to see what the ombudsman says now.