Bank repeatedly cancelling money transfer to a different bank

coyrls

I have had the same experience with Nationwide, once you have clicked through multiple warnings, transfers go ahead with no problems.  I have moved significant sums through my account recently, for the same reason as everybody else (chasing rates) with no issues.  There is a £10K limit for an individual transfer but you can do multiple individual £10K transfers to the same account in one day.

GeoffTF

EdSwippet said:

Albermarle said:
I recently transferred some money from Nationwide current account to an investment account ( £5K) . I did get at least 5 warnings as I went through the process. When it asked for what reason was I sending the money , I said investment . I can not remember the exact wording but it was along the lines of 'don't do it and if you do then on your head be it'

The money did go through though . 

That I could live with. My First Direct experience is that you set up the payment, jump through the OTP two-factor authentication hoops (twice) and so on, and your balance goes down. Fine so far. Except that if you look tomorrow, the balance has quite possibly gone back up again, because First Direct silently and unilaterally reversed/cancelled the payment, but with no notice or explanation.

I guess I'll look into Nationwide. Thanks for the note.

I expect that you would have more luck phoning them and telling them at great length about all the checks that you have done. When they say the have made the payment, ask them whether it is has gone straight through or gone to security. If it has gone to security, ask to be put through to them.

Daliah

coyrls said:

I have had the same experience with Nationwide, once you have clicked through multiple warnings, transfers go ahead with no problems.  I have moved significant sums through my account recently, for the same reason as everybody else (chasing rates) with no issues.  There is a £10K limit for an individual transfer but you can do multiple individual £10K transfers to the same account in one day.

Nationwide will do this until they get hit by some scamsters and have to fork out refunds to the alleged victims. Or they are just late in switching on their fraud detection software. Eventually, they'll make the same number of random checks as other banks do.

We'll have to live with these random checks. What is definitely not acceptable, though, is what HSBC, FD and Barclays have been doing - they can't just hold the payments and then reverse them without having spoken to the account holder.

EdSwippet

GeoffTF said:

EdSwippet said:

Albermarle said:
I recently transferred some money from Nationwide current account to an investment account ( £5K) . I did get at least 5 warnings as I went through the process. When it asked for what reason was I sending the money , I said investment . I can not remember the exact wording but it was along the lines of 'don't do it and if you do then on your head be it'

The money did go through though . 

That I could live with. My First Direct experience is that you set up the payment, jump through the OTP two-factor authentication hoops (twice) and so on, and your balance goes down. Fine so far. Except that if you look tomorrow, the balance has quite possibly gone back up again, because First Direct silently and unilaterally reversed/cancelled the payment, but with no notice or explanation.

I guess I'll look into Nationwide. Thanks for the note.

I expect that you would have more luck phoning them and telling them at great length about all the checks that you have done. When they say the have made the payment, ask them whether it is has gone straight through or gone to security. If it has gone to security, ask to be put through to them.

You'd think. However, done it, and it doesn't work. The person handling the payment setup can't say whether or not the fraud department will trap and possibly halt the payment later in the day until they either do or don't. It's an asynchronous and disconnected process, run by separate departments and with (apparently) no communication between them.

GeoffTF

EdSwippet said:

GeoffTF said:

EdSwippet said:

Albermarle said:
I recently transferred some money from Nationwide current account to an investment account ( £5K) . I did get at least 5 warnings as I went through the process. When it asked for what reason was I sending the money , I said investment . I can not remember the exact wording but it was along the lines of 'don't do it and if you do then on your head be it'

The money did go through though . 

That I could live with. My First Direct experience is that you set up the payment, jump through the OTP two-factor authentication hoops (twice) and so on, and your balance goes down. Fine so far. Except that if you look tomorrow, the balance has quite possibly gone back up again, because First Direct silently and unilaterally reversed/cancelled the payment, but with no notice or explanation.

I guess I'll look into Nationwide. Thanks for the note.

I expect that you would have more luck phoning them and telling them at great length about all the checks that you have done. When they say the have made the payment, ask them whether it is has gone straight through or gone to security. If it has gone to security, ask to be put through to them.

You'd think. However, done it, and it doesn't work. The person handling the payment setup can't say whether or not the fraud department will trap and possibly halt the payment later in the day until they either do or don't. It's an asynchronous and disconnected process, run by separate departments and with (apparently) no communication between them.

I hope Santander does not go the same way. As I have said, the processes keep changing here. It is few months before I have another term account mature.

Albermarle

Daliah said:

coyrls said:

I have had the same experience with Nationwide, once you have clicked through multiple warnings, transfers go ahead with no problems.  I have moved significant sums through my account recently, for the same reason as everybody else (chasing rates) with no issues.  There is a £10K limit for an individual transfer but you can do multiple individual £10K transfers to the same account in one day.

Nationwide will do this until they get hit by some scamsters and have to fork out refunds to the alleged victims. Or they are just late in switching on their fraud detection software. Eventually, they'll make the same number of random checks as other banks do.

We'll have to live with these random checks. What is definitely not acceptable, though, is what HSBC, FD and Barclays have been doing - they can't just hold the payments and then reverse them without having spoken to the account holder.

With Nationwide I did get a call and a grilling, when I set up a new payee and made a payment of about £1000. However this was to a local landscape gardener so I could understand their intervention . I would not expect payments to recognised financial providers to be blocked ( or silently reversed in the case of First Direct apparently) . Also I had no problem in making transfers of £10K  to a mainstream car dealer and a final debit card payment.
On the other hand they texted /phoned me one evening to discuss unusual payments from my debit card, and when I went to look for it , I could not find it . It had been nicked from a locker at a leisure centre earlier that day without me realising it. 
I think they are just being sensible and their systems seem to be working .Hopefully it will stay that way .

kaMelo

It is much easier and considerably less costly for banks to block first and then make you jump through hoops, indeed it is how the FOS expects banks to act. They consider that inconvenience for everyone is the trade off in protecting the minority of customers, whom they think should bear no responsibility whatsoever for their actions, who fall for so called "sophisticated scams" despite there being nothing sophisticated about them.  Get used to it, banking is now more onerous that it was for everyone because a minority simply didn't bother to check.

Two cases in point, I could list dozens of them;
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2628594.pdf
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2977004.pdf

If you think the banks are going to care giving out £25-£50 to placate upset customers who've had payments blocked then think again, the consequences of letting payments through are far more substantial.

Daliah

I have only read the £273K case. Outrageous. It's obvious that fraudsters will try even harder than before because it's now easier than ever to set up a scam. No wonder banks are holding up more and more payments, and that we are given the nth degree before our money is released again.

masonic

kaMelo said:

It is much easier and considerably less costly for banks to block first and then make you jump through hoops, indeed it is how the FOS expects banks to act. They consider that inconvenience for everyone is the trade off in protecting the minority of customers, whom they think should bear no responsibility whatsoever for their actions, who fall for so called "sophisticated scams" despite there being nothing sophisticated about them.  Get used to it, banking is now more onerous that it was for everyone because a minority simply didn't bother to check.

Two cases in point, I could list dozens of them;
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2628594.pdf
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2977004.pdf

If you think the banks are going to care giving out £25-£50 to placate upset customers who've had payments blocked then think again, the consequences of letting payments through are far more substantial.

Thanks, very interesting. If someone started a thread here about potentially making such "investments" I'm certain they would have received helpful responses that would have identified each case as a scam. There are plenty of past threads that do just that. There is clearly quite a challenge in educating people about the finer points of checking the FCA register and thinking critically in general.

Albermarle

I heard someone on the radio, saying that the number of fraudulent transactions of any kind was minute in % terms compared to the number of overall transactions . So operationally it was difficult to always spot the needle in the haystack so to speak.
A quick google search , seems to indicate that there are about 3 million fraudulent transactions a year of all types , of which around 10,000 are of the type detailed in the links above . The majority of these 3 M transactions are more minor credit card type issues .

The actual number of consumer bank transactions in UK each year is 35 Billion . 

Not making any excuses for banks but puts things in some kind of context I guess.