Incorrect CIFAS Marker.... made to feel like a criminal

Canski

I'll try to keep this brief but i'm so angry I  tend to ramble on.
In July  2016 someone opened a bank account at Barclays using my details (easily available from companies house) and some other details that were very inaccurate  eg time at address, phone number etc. which were incorrect. Despite this Barclays opened an account for them and it was used fraudulently. An investigation was launched and I had the police 'wanting to talk to me' about it.  I only found out after being refused credit  that there was a tag at CIFAS in my name citing first party fraud.
In the end Barclays did an investigation and accepted that I was innocent and gave me £150 compensation and said that it would have the tag removed at CIFAS

Roll forward 4 years and I have recently tried to open 3 bank accounts and all have been refused, even one at Barclays. Despite my experian credit rating of 999 out of 999 I couldn't understand why until I checked with CIFAS again. The tag was still there. I contacted Barclays who said that they would call me back within 5 days. In the meantime I transferred a large sum of money from my business account to my personal account at Santander. Then I realised that I couldn't log on to that account or my joint account at the same bank either. When I contacted Santander they told me that they were withdrawing my banking facilities with immediate effect. My partner was out shopping at the time and was in tears at the supermarket when her card was declined. Sure enough both my private and my joint account were frozen with over £22 k in them. I don't think that any bills have been paid in the last 2 weeks and my partner has started to not trust me despite me telling her what happened. My mother recently passed away and I was also trying to open a joint account with my sister to receive funds from our mothers estate. That was also refused and I thought it must be her past record due to me being squeaky clean.
After waiting 8 days Barclays came back to me and said they would start an investigation this has concluded today after and  they say that the tag will be removed and have offered £750 compensation. The last few weeks have been hell. I think the sum offered is way too low and I intend to take this to the financial ombudsman.  Santander have said that it is very rare that they will reverse their decision but to send them the paperwork anyway and they will look into it. In the meantime I am wary of moving my funds to another bank account I hold in case that gets frozen as well. We have over 20 diet debits and standing orders going out of the accounts and it seems a real pain to change them anyway. Some won't do it online and I have to call them. Ive tried but you can imagine the call queues in this Covid time.

What do other people think ? Is £750 fair for this level of disruption ?

DCFC79

You do realise your rating of 999 isnt seen by lenders, they see your history, there's a difference.

What amount of money DO you think would be fair ?

bigadaj

It's a relatively large sum for compensation. What you need to do is actually document your costs and losses, £750 is a lot for distress and inconvenience but if you can demonstrate costs elsewhere then that will obviously eat into the sum being offered. What sum do you think would be fair? 

Seldonista

I hope to Christ I never go through something like this but unfortunately this is what you have to expect from Barclays. I signed upto their Double blue regards if you switch thing, saved all the documents followed the instructions perfectly, got confirmation from Barclays and the new bank the old switch confirmed, wasn't getting the double blue rewards. I got told: I had switched but they had to be 2 separate direct debits not both to PayPal, I hadn't switched and the direct debits were fine, I hadn't confirmed the switch, I hadn't signed up for blue rewards etc. Complained - up £50, worth it, and incredibly good fun on a rainy Saturday  afternoon when you're hungover.
I will never trust them again.

Obviously incomparable with what they've put you through but I suspect the same problems are behind it and to me it indicates a "relaxed" attitude to staff corruption.

Never underestimate the power of persistent, but polite, unemotional, well-researched complaining.

You could try something with a bit of "oh god he's going to go Joe Lycett about it or something" sass

"Dear...
Many thanks for your kind offer of compensation.
I am however disappointed that your offer does not reflect the gravity of the circumstances that you, knowingly or by negligence, put me and my family through. (State the facts)
I am confident that you did not do this knowingly, which leaves the possibility of negligence. However (evidence to prove it is impossible that they were neglige because they already confirmed they had sorted it out before it happened).
Also (fraud, law, data protection, responsibility to hold accurate data, banking rules? Financial ombudsman good practice guide? Fca/pea, Barclays own policies or mission statement or customer service agreement or any documents that they sent you when they said they sorted it out years ago)."
Then you could say "I may seek legal advice/small claims court/consider police action/referring this to the financial ombudsman (who don't do anything)/and or any lawful action I feel is necessary
"I look forward to your swift response,
Angry customer #1,000,000"
Mentioning the small claims court is good because it means you're implicitly saying "you briefly ruined my life, I want £10k, but I don't want to come and explicitly say it"
Imagine it was the other way round and you had done this to Barclays, or another Barclays customer - you'd have the police round. Why shouldn't it be the same for them?

Good luck and I'd love an update on how it goes. Don't let people on here talk you down, for all you know they could be PIs hired by Barclays

SpreadableToast

Take the money.  £750 is a very reasonable amount of compensation even under the circumstances you've described.

I can't see you being offered more by the FOS, and you could be waiting months for any sort of resolution.

penners324

I'd be checking your credit history with the CRAs today to make sure the CIFAS marker is removed.

mab3000

How do you know that the actions of Santander is to do with this issue with Barclays. This could be a completely unrelated issue, Santander will not have told you why they have decided to close your account, if they suspect fraudulent activity then they wouldn’t be allowed to tell you due to it being illegal to “tip you off”. 

You say you transferred £22k from your business to your personal account. Where was this £22k from? Why did it get transferred to your personal account? As from your post suggests Santander deciding to close your account with immediate effect happening shortly after this transfer was made, I have a feeling it’s to do with these funds rather than the marker. 

MovingForwards

penners324 said:

I'd be checking your credit history with the CRAs today to make sure the CIFAS marker is removed.

This type of marker doesn't show on the CRAs, only victim of fraud does, have to apply to CIFAS directly to see if it's been removed.

Chino

SpreadableToast said:

Take the money.  £750 is a very reasonable amount of compensation even under the circumstances you've described.

Bearing in mind the grief that Barclays' actions have caused the OP, I think compensation of at least ten times that amount would be by no means unreasonable.

Banks need to be made to understand that capriciously blocking a customer's account and adding Cifas markers causes real suffering for that customer. Unfortunately, it is too easy for banks to hide behind the law on this and leave the customer high and dry the second someone cries "fraud".

Shakin_Steve

It's not just the fact that some banks seem to have a cavalier attitude to putting customers in a predicament without proper and timely investigation, it's also the fact that any of our so called consumer champions seem loathe to bring these things to the publics attention. 

Martin Lewis should be doing a half hour slot on this, instead of the repetitive 'save on energy bills' we get every week. Even if the banks refuse to appear or comment, the fact that it's on national TV would surely make them more understanding of the damage they do by freezing an account.
I simply do not believe that these things cannot be brought to a conclusion, and the account unfrozen/closed, in around a week. Four, six, even eight weeks smacks of laziness.

eskbanker

Shakin_Steve said:

It's not just the fact that some banks seem to have a cavalier attitude to putting customers in a predicament without proper and timely investigation, it's also the fact that any of our so called consumer champions seem loathe to bring these things to the publics attention. 

Martin Lewis should be doing a half hour slot on this, instead of the repetitive 'save on energy bills' we get every week. Even if the banks refuse to appear or comment, the fact that it's on national TV would surely make them more understanding of the damage they do by freezing an account.

Personally I'm not surprised that ML would focus on matters of interest to the majority of his audience - there will be tens of millions who can benefit from switching energy providers, but the number of customers reported to CIFAS by banks is probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands (anyone know?) and I'm guessing that the proportion of 'false positives' among those will be small.  Obviously such occurrences are highly disruptive for those customers so I'm not downplaying their impact, but simply suggesting that the scale of the issue is unlikely to be as significant as might be inferred from the threads on here.

Perhaps I'm being naive here but would hope that the FCA (and maybe NCA) would monitor the level of such reporting by each bank and take action if there's any evidence of trigger-happy over-reporting - banks are probably obliged to err on the side of caution by the AML legislation, which obviously disadvantages innocent customers initially perceived as suspicious, but that's not the same as reporting customers for the fun of it, and naturally it's usually only one side of the story that's told by aggrieved posters on here....

Some of that is just supposition though, perhaps anyone with actual inside knowledge can confirm or deny?