Revolut account frozen

eskbanker

marek8760 said:

I then got an email saying all was good to go, but the account remained frozen and I was told in a subsequent chat that the email was sent in error. I am appalled to read that this does not seem to be uncommon, and that the advice is to sit and wait it out. I am about to complain to the FOS, but someone wrote that this could incur further delays. This system can’t be right. Has anyone else got any advice?

You have the right to escalate a formal complaint to FOS if it's been open for more than eight weeks without an adequate resolution but yes, the FOS process is lengthy and drawn out (many months), so don't be under any illusion that it speeds things up, and where financial institutions are conducting confidential investigations, FOS can't intervene anyway.

Having said that, ten months is some way beyond acceptable, so if you phone FOS and convey the urgency (i.e. why you need access to this money) then they may be able and willing to contact Revolut on your behalf, rather than following their standard complaint escalation process.

marek8760

Thanks for that. I was just downloading the forms form the FOS but I think I will take your advice and call them tomorrow morning and at least get their take on what best route to follow. Aside from the time taken in checking of my account, I am simply appalled by the lack of any customer service beyond the patronising comments that they are trained to regurgitate. I have 44 pages of chat going back several months documenting this and, reading it back, am amazed I did not break out into expletives several times over. Is. It worth raising this with BBC Moneybox and sending them the chat history?

eskbanker

marek8760 said:

Is. It worth raising this with BBC Moneybox and sending them the chat history?

Possibly, but how much of a story would it actually make?  Obviously ten months is an extremely lengthy time to resolve this regardless, but is this a large sum of money that is causing you financial hardship, etc?

Band7

fourmarks said:

I understand the need for investigating 'suspicious' or 'unusual/irregular' activity, but the practice of not discussing the circumstances with the account holder, in the majority of cases, is, in my opinion, a total nonsense. The account holder is the one person who can give chapter and verse on the management of the account and in many cases would be able to satisfactorily explain the transactions that are perplexing the bank and the N.C.A. Clearly this course of action would not be possible in all cases, but the N.C.A. should be able to downgrade a significant number of low-risk cases to a level where it would be appropriate for open questioning of the account holder to take place, thereby enabling a much swifter resolution for the benefit of all parties.

I often read here that the banks, and N.C.A. are forbidden to discuss these matters with the account holder. Now I have no knowledge of the statutory obligations under which the N.C.A. are required to work in these cases, so can anyone tell me if that silence is an absolute legal requirement, or is it merely an option that they always utilise as a matter of course to make their lives easier, rather than differentiating between individual circumstances?

Sorry to be so long winded.

If you are starting an investigation into a crime but haven't yet got all the facts, will you share all your findings with all the suspects so that those who are guilty can take action to avoid getting caught? If yes, you'd make a lousy investigator. If no, you might understand why banks don't share anything about the investigations that they or the NCA have launched. If they need explanations from the account holder, they will ask them as required.

Having said this, I am not surprised to hear that Revolut are dragging their heels. It's an open secret that Revolut has terrible CS. Yet still people are flocking to them in numbers.

marek8760

eskbanker said:

marek8760 said:

Is. It worth raising this with BBC Moneybox and sending them the chat history?

Possibly, but how much of a story would it actually make?  Obviously ten months is an extremely lengthy time to resolve this regardless, but is this a large sum of money that is causing you financial hardship, etc?

It should be a story if enough people have had a similar experience. It’s the utter lack of agency in the matter that is so disturbing from the account holder’s point of view. £1500 which would come in useful given fuel and heating hikes! But if I also had a hike in mortgage and a couple of kids to feed!! It was much more when I opened the account but thankfully I had transferred most of it before the freeze.

marek8760

Band7 said:

fourmarks said:

I understand the need for investigating 'suspicious' or 'unusual/irregular' activity, but the practice of not discussing the circumstances with the account holder, in the majority of cases, is, in my opinion, a total nonsense. The account holder is the one person who can give chapter and verse on the management of the account and in many cases would be able to satisfactorily explain the transactions that are perplexing the bank and the N.C.A. Clearly this course of action would not be possible in all cases, but the N.C.A. should be able to downgrade a significant number of low-risk cases to a level where it would be appropriate for open questioning of the account holder to take place, thereby enabling a much swifter resolution for the benefit of all parties.

If they need explanations from the account holder, they will ask them as required.

Having said this, I am not surprised to hear that Revolut are dragging their heels. It's an open secret that Revolut has terrible CS. Yet still people are flocking to them in numbers.

They did ask me to send proof of origin of funds etc and I complied - it happened to be an inheritance so that was easy enough to prove. Then they sent an email to tell me it all checked out. Then I try to move money and it is still frozen! Chat said ignore the email as it was automated and sent in error. This is a farce. I agree with fourmarks that there could be a risk triage which would eliminate the low risk / low amounts of money in question. I suspect these regs are being used to the banks advantage at our expense with little come back, and that is just wrong.

Regarding Revolut CS - was I chatting with a bot all that time? If so the bots had shift changes mid conversation. What does a bot get up to on its break I wonder? Maybe I should try for a media story to expose the shocking level of CS.

gd55

Given the timeline I would certainly be emailing the consumer finance journalists of it was me. Moneybox and The Guardian worth a try.

marek8760

eskbanker said:

if you phone FOS and convey the urgency (i.e. why you need access to this money) then they may be able and willing to contact Revolut on your behalf, rather than following their standard complaint escalation process.

This morning I registered a complaint with the FOS. Decided to go with doing it over the phone. Very helpful and sympathetic customer service rep took the call, but she did emphasise their impartiality. They will not deal with it outside of the standard escalation process. The advice was to email the essential facts of the case rather than swamp them with the verbatim chat. That might speed up their investigation. She then said it could go one of two ways. On being notified of the FOS complaint Revolut may decide to deal with it immediately and hope to avert a charge from the FOS, or they may just put me to the back of the queue until forced to do something by the FOS in which case at am waiting on the FOS investigation timescale which could be several months.

I have also decided to bring this to the attention of probably Moneybox as we don’t know which one of several similar complaints might tip them over into looking into the matter on air. That tends to get results and is a serious embarrassment to the company. If I don’t pass on info on what is going on, and if others don’t, then who knows if we would ever reach that tipping point of complaints. Wish me luck, and thanks for the comments and guidance.

phillw

marek8760 said:

I am about to complain to the FOS, but someone wrote that this could incur further delays. This system can’t be right. Has anyone else got any advice?

In general you would complain to the bank first, you have to actually say "I want to make a complaint" as phoning up and complaining is not the same thing and then they have 8 weeks to deal with it. Sometimes you can hurry them up by asking for a deadlock letter, this allows them to say they aren't going to do anything but you can go to the ombudsman without running out the clock.

How confident they are that the ombudsman will find in their favor will change how they deal with your complaint. They know they have to follow certain procedures if they suspect any kind of fraud, so complaining about that might not do too much. Complaining about excessive time taken might have more traction.

If they have gone 8 weeks and haven't done anything, then it's hard to see that holding off going to the ombudsman is going to add further delays. But you can't know either way.

marek8760

Went through the formal complaint procedure to the bank and got a Final Response that did not uphold my complaint (complaint being excessive time taken). Registered my complaint with the FOS and informed Revolut of the same so it is now up to them to decide to review and act or wait until the FOS has looked at it. Will update as info comes back.