Santander ignored/refused subject access request

eskbanker

h00vertime said:

oh really... lol how come I ended up getting scammed then?? Im down 2k ,all messages deleted and the guy vanished. the police have said neither the reg or the bank account can be found or the person.

You've ended up out of pocket because you authorised a payment but then tried to change your mind - if you hadn't got cold feet then you'd presumably have driven away with the car to show for it?

That's not to say that the car or the seller was legit, but all that checking you've done was after the event, so if Santander are washing their hands of it on the basis that you changed your mind shortly after committing to the purchase then that seems to be factually true, even if it doesn't tell the whole story?

When you were setting up the first transfer, did the payee name pass the Confirmation of Payee validation?

masonic

h00vertime said:

-I Transfered £10 which arrived to the seller immediately

-I transferred the rest which apparently did not arrive 

- a second person entered the vehicle and the seller said he was going to leave me with him to finish the deal as he had to leave

You said it "apparently did not arrive", implying that there was no reason to suspect it didn't go through on your side. So both transactions were made and authorised by you. Your statement would have shown both outgoing transactions at this point

h00vertime said:

- a second person entered the vehicle and the seller said he was going to leave me with him to finish the deal as he had to leave

 - I was on the phone originally trying to authorise the transaction but when the second person entered the vehicle, realising i could be being scammed I Deliberately rang off the call before passing security.

- santander then sent me a txt asking if I recognised the transaction to which I replied 'NO'

Then the transaction you authorised was flagged and held by security. You decided to call to Santander when the money didn't arrive and terminated before telling them what your call was about, so they would have been none the wiser at this point that it was related to the transaction you had just made. Abandoning the phonecall at that time was the right thing to do if you could be overheard going through security.

Then you receive the text and reply 'NO'. This is the first indication something is not right about this transaction. I am surprised that they just waved the transaction through owing to being unable to contact you, this does seem like genuine grounds for complaint. But it would be wrong to say you didn't authorise the transaction, and it would be wrong to say you didn't pass security (because that was you abandoning a subsequent phonecall, not the transaction itself).

h00vertime said:

- thinking the transaction had not been processed i left the scene.

- the seller then deleted all whatsapp messages and removed the advert

- I have reported to the police/actionfraud who have said there are no viable lines of enquiry. which when i enquired was told the car reg didnt match to anyone or the phone number or the bank details.

-Santander said the payment was flagged by security and they tried to contact me but couldn't so processed it anyway after 2 days in which time i was locked out of my online banking and didnt have the 1.5hrs it takes to get through on the phone to them as i had to go bk to sea.

What happened to your transaction list and available balance during those two days? Normally when a payment is held by security, it stays on your account unless stopped. The fact the money was still missing from my account would be a strong incentive for me to get in touch with Santander as soon as possible when in a private place where I could go through security safely.

There is no doubt that you authorised the transaction when you made it. Authorised is the 'A' in APP. So far, so good. What is tricky is that you realised you were potentially being scammed after you made the transaction. Luckily, Santander flagged and held the payment. Unluckily, they couldn't get in touch with you. So they gave up trying and released it after 2 days? Had they not done that, all would potentially be well. It seems like that decision should be the focus of your complaint. Chasing for something said by a customer service agent that could probably be explained away as an error is probably not going to be very productive. Taking your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman would be a better course of action. The FOS will be able to get access to any transcripts of calls if they think they are material to your case, so I'd suggest dropping the SARs and focus on escalating the complaint as soon as possible.

I'm curious though, why transfer £10? Typically people go for a lower amount as a test payment. I'd also echo eskbanker's question about confirmation of payee, if it passed, then you either have the alleged scammer's real name, or that of a money mule helping them. You mentioned that the police said the bank details didn't match anyone, but I think it's highly unlikely a bank account was opened in the name of someone who does not exist.

Finally, Santander's account of events confirms that the car seller was telling the truth when they claimed not to have received the second transfer on the day it was made. So, at worst they've failed to return the money when it landed unexpectedly in their bank account 2 days later. Have you asked Santander to attempt to recover the money as a transfer made in error? If the car seller had started a thread to ask us what to do about £2k landing in their bank account from a jumpy buyer who got cold feet mid-sale but who forgot to stop the payment, we'd be advising they keep the money safe and await contact from their bank.

h00vertime

thanks for the replies. I don't think it was meant to ever be a legitimate transaction. I also don't think the car was ever for sale.... so transferring money to somone, who then claims they haven't received it and then wants to leave you with a 3rd party thats just turned up doesn't set any alarm bells off to you??

surely If i think im going to get scammed, realize and "change my mind" then actually go on to get scammed... the end product is the same. ive been scammed... at what point it happened is immaterial.

also I would have thought a phone call where someone rings off the call in an uneasy manner whilst arguing with 2 guys in a car
may have lead to questions when they also get a fraud alert response from the txt reply i sent

Santander have said it left my account 2 days later after being held by security. this happened late, I was traveling and joining a ship the next day I literally did not have the time to spend endless hrs  on hold on the phone in that time 

h00vertime

"Unluckily, they couldn't get in touch with you. So they gave up trying and released it after 2 days? Had they not done that, all would potentially be well. It seems like that decision should be the focus of your complaint. "

yeah i see what your saying I might go on that angle

h00vertime

***UPDATE !!!!!!?!*** So i finally received my SAR and the alerts section has obviously has been edited!!

...conveniently removing the alert they sent on the 13/2/22 which i replied 'N' too.

take a look....

https://ibb.co/F8xZMYR

masonic

h00vertime said:

***UPDATE !!!!!!?!*** So i finally received my SAR and the alerts section has obviously has been edited!!

...conveniently removing the alert they sent on the 13/2/22 which i replied 'N' too.

take a look....

https://ibb.co/F8xZMYR

So you were in the car making the transaction on the 13th Feb, yet there is no record of the SMS, nor the call from security. I don't know whether or not an SMS would be recorded in this log.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they probably haven't fraudulently altered this document. Have they denied that the SMS was sent by them?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but if the transaction happened on 13th Feb, the payment left your account 2 days later (but invariably such transactions appear in your transaction history immediately, they just don't get received at the other end), that takes us up to 15th Feb. The call to report you'd been scammed was recorded on 18th March, about a month later. Was it just that you hadn't noticed the £2k was missing from your account in the intervening period?

This new information does paint a somewhat different picture.

In terms of what you have to support your case, unless I'm missing something, there is your word about the car viewing and the reason you made the payments (although the car, phone number and bank details appear not to exist), there is the SMS you say you've received (you might have evidence of this on your phone, but caller ID and SMS short codes can be spoofed, and the bank has now provided you with records apparently suggesting no such contact was made by them), and you now have a possible allegation that a bank employee has committed fraud to cover the tracks (although other more likely explanations exist).

Going against you, there is the fact a month elapsed between the money leaving your account and you making the allegation that you didn't receive the car you were purchasing, the bank's records that don't support that they contacted you on the day of the transaction (perhaps contradicted by your phone records), and that the police were unable to find any evidence to corroborate to the events you describe.

Unless Santander confirms the SMS was genuine, your only remaining line of complaint would be one of them fraudulently denying this contact took place.

(Edit: corrected comment about receiving call from Santander - I re-read the earlier post stating this was actually a call you made and hung up)

binao

I see from your other thread you may have received a SLC overpayment?

masonic

h00vertime said:

No it was 3 days. due to having immediate work commitments and thinking cause my account was blocked and id pressed 'N' I was going to be ok.

The date recorded against the call you made to raise a scam claim is clearly 18-03-2022. You are claiming the scam occurred on 13-02-2022. That's a month's difference, not 3 days. Are you misremembering which month it was that you tried to purchase this car?

h00vertime said:

Where they have edited (badly) should be my phone call on the day of the scam where I was in the car and I failed security. there should be an alert there as a security failed is in one of the next warnings.

You said in your original post "Deliberately rang off the call before passing security", so you didn't fail security, you hung up the call. This means Santander wouldn't have known what this call was about, or whether you just got cut off. You shouldn't expect to see any record of this, and even if there was a record of it, that wouldn't help your case, as the call could have been about anything. We know that your intention when making that call was to find out why the transfer hadn't been received by the seller, and if it was being held, to get it released, but after you hung up you changed your mind about the transaction. That's information Santander does not have.

Your claim that "they have edited (badly)" looks to me like they have pasted two 6-row blocks of a table into the document. This doesn't seem to be indicative of foul play. Your claim that there are rows missing between those two blocks of the table relies on your assertion that the events took place in February rather than March. If the scam happened three days prior to the call you made to raise the scam claim, then that would have been 15-03-2022 and so it would have been within the second block of 6 rows, not between the two blocks.

I think you should work to address these inconsistencies before taking up a case against Santander. At the moment your account of events doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

h00vertime said:

Yes i have the text on my phone.

Has Santander confirmed the text was sent by them? Perhaps the date of the text can help clear up the confusion around the dates above, if there is certainty the text was sent by Santander and that it relates to this transaction.

h00vertime

i dont know why it says march i started the scam claim it when I first rang on the 16th as it says here...

https://ibb.co/Pc16bRG

why would you edit an SAR at all?? i asked for ALL of my records from the beginning of that month onwards. every txt, mail, message, call ect. 

if id asked for everything from before and including the scam why would you purposely send me everything after?

where is the log that they tried to ring me after as they claim when i replied N to the txt? the txt says they would do

the audio is still on its way apparently on a CD

masonic

h00vertime said:

i dont know why it says march i started the scam claim it when I first rang on the 16th as it says here...

https://ibb.co/Pc16bRG

Ok, so there is a more comprehensive body of documentation you've received in response to your SAR than than the previous screenshot you shared indicated. This one suggests you raised a claim on the 16th February and that it was closed on 1st March. I'm not going to try to guess what the call you made on 18th March to raise a scam claim pertained to, or the appeal attempt on 24th March. These probably aren't going to be material to any case you may have against Santander.

h00vertime said:

why would you edit an SAR at all?? i asked for ALL of my records from the beginning of that month onwards. every txt, mail, message, call ect. 

if id asked for everything from before and including the scam why would you purposely send me everything after?

where is the log that they tried to ring me after as they claim when i replied N to the txt? the txt says they would do

the audio is still on its way apparently on a CD

The thing about an SAR is that they only have to provide you with information they are currently holding, and they do not need to curate it into a format that will be easy for you to understand. Some of the information you've received had an expiry date associated with it, so that's another possible explanation for information you were expecting to see being absent (in addition to it not being recorded at all, and not being a genuine communication from Santander). If they say they tried to call you, but this isn't in the log, that suggests unsuccessful contact is not logged, or this information is not retained for >6 months.

Anything that happened after the payment was released is irrelevant to your case. The only pertinent phone call was the one you made while in the car, and that could only count against you IMHO because at that time you wanted the payment to go through.

Rather than continue to pour over this SAR, drawing potentially faulty inferences that Santander is being dishonest, it might be more productive to speak to someone who can access Santander's systems directly, and who can correctly interpret the information therein. You can then come up with a set of agreed facts and understand if there are any factual matters you disagree about.

It seems to me that the focus of your complaint is still the SMS you received and your 'N' response to it. I've asked a couple of times now whether Santander have agreed that SMS came from them and wasn't a scam text. That's probably all you need to clarify if you intend to put forward the case that this 'N' response should have been taken as a withdrawal of your authorisation for the transaction that was being held.