NatWest First Party Fraud Restrictions - Please HELP!

tonyga421

The main issue i have is they will only communicate via email - which is quite slow - and they are not responding.

RG2015

tonyga421 said:

flo22 said:

tonyga421 said:

mab3000 said:

As if the bank would’ve told the OP(s) to email the first party fraud team, tipping the customers off that they are subject to a first party fraud investigation… 

What does OP (s) mean?

Original Poster

Sorry what is does an Original Poster mean?

So they asked me to email the first party fraud team - does that mean they suspect me?

The main issue i have is they will only

The very first post on a thread is the original post. The author of the original post is the original poster.

The convention on this forum is to refer to both of these as the “OP”.

In this instance you are the OP and your first post can also be referred to as the OP.

There is no question of being suspected. The law requires that every bank satisfies itself that any large deposits are not derived from money laundering activities.

They appear to have identified your transaction as unusual and will carry out investigations to determine whether there is anything that may be illegal.

RG2015

tonyga421 said:

The main issue i have is they will only communicate via email - which is quite slow - and they are not responding.

This is unusual but you need to wait for them to respond.

If you are experiencing financial difficulties, you should be able to ask them to release funds as a previous poster had suggested.

born_again

tonyga421 said:

flo22 said:

tonyga421 said:

mab3000 said:

As if the bank would’ve told the OP(s) to email the first party fraud team, tipping the customers off that they are subject to a first party fraud investigation… 

What does OP (s) mean?

Original Poster

Sorry what is does an Original Poster mean?

So they asked me to email the first party fraud team - does that mean they suspect me?

The main issue i have is they will only

First party is you.. 3rd part is someone else.

If you ever get to talk to these guys. It will be fun. They are very good at questioning people. Even better than some police.

sheramber

You didn't leave for long.

Nobody can hurry things up. Unfortunately, the bank will take as long as they need and contacting them will not make them do it any quicker.

RG2015

born_again said:

tonyga421 said:

flo22 said:

tonyga421 said:

mab3000 said:

As if the bank would’ve told the OP(s) to email the first party fraud team, tipping the customers off that they are subject to a first party fraud investigation… 

What does OP (s) mean?

Original Poster

Sorry what is does an Original Poster mean?

So they asked me to email the first party fraud team - does that mean they suspect me?

The main issue i have is they will only

First party is you.. 3rd part is someone else.

If you ever get to talk to these guys. It will be fun. They are very good at questioning people. Even better than some police.

They must have different grades of investigators at NatWest. I once made an unusual transaction and got a text saying that the fraud team would call me to confirm this.

They went through a load of questions and released the payment. This all took about 5 minutes.

The questions were pretty basic and their main focus was if I was being pressurised into making the payment. It was all very civil and actually quite reassuring.

Oh yes, and another thing. It was not at all like being questioned by the police.

pafpcg

tonyga421 said:

The main issue i have is they will only communicate via email - which is quite slow - and they are not responding.

What do you mean "quite slow"? 

The delivery time from despatch to receipt of an email is relatively fast - the order of a second or so; it should be faster than a SMS (text) message, probably quicker than the time between you dialling a telephone number and the called party's phone starting to ring and much quicker than it takes for someone at the called end to recogise the ring and answer the call!

I'd suggest that there are multiple reasons for having a policy of email-only:

• the text of emails can be stored by both parties
• the emailed messages are automatically timestamped and carry an identifiable sender's name
• the emailed messages can be catalogued and stored for easy retrieval
  
• emails can reduce emotive language (well, sometimes...)

This is perhaps the opportune moment to point out (as has been done countless times in other threads on the MSE forum) of the value of having more than one bank account to be able to carry on financial transactions should, for whatever reason, a bank account becomes inaccessible.