Lloyds Bank – Midnight Security Checks? 25 September 2022 at 7:43PM in Budgeting & bank accounts 22 replies 1.3K views

Roy1234

My wife is a long-term Lloyds customer with all her accounts in good order.  A few months back she awoke one morning to find Morrisons had cancelled that day’s online food delivery.  Chasing Morrisons and then Lloyds eventually revealed that the food order, which became closed-off late the previous night, had been debited to her Lloyds Mastercard around midnight.  Lloyds then sent a message demanding she validate the transaction via her banking app.  But she was asleep with phone off.  So the shopping delivery slot was lost.

Complaining to Lloyds, they blamed the size of the order.  £250 for a monthly shop is quite easy nowadays, as you may have noticed.  Plus this was a long-term repeat pattern of the same supermarket, same address, similar amounts.  Lloyds promised to ‘flag’ Morrisons as safe so this would never recur. 

But today it happened again.  Lloyds send a demand to validate today’s Morrisons food order just after midnight.  By chance she was awake and did so, but taking 7 mins some time after midnight was too slow for Lloyds.  Food delivery & slot lost, again.

Complaining to Lloyds, a not too sympathetic person said that as she’d spent 30 euros abroad a couple of weeks ago, which went through without issue, this had raised some kind of alert on the account.  What, just one purchase, having used her card in the UK since?!  She uses the Lloyds app which we know tracks the user’s location so can tell them wherever she is, so this makes no sense.

The gist of their response was that any bank would behave the same way.  So if you order food online, the final bill being debited around midnight, you must stay up to the wee small hours lest your bank require the order validating within minutes?

I think she needs a new bank.  Any similar experiences out there?

xylophone

Lloyds promised to ‘flag’ Morrisons as safe so this would never recur. 

It seems to me that your wife was entitled to rely on this assurance so that the fact that the problem re-occurred is worthy of a formal written complaint and a request for compensation.

Roy1234

xylophone said:

Lloyds promised to ‘flag’ Morrisons as safe so this would never recur. 

It seems to me that your wife was entitled to rely on this assurance so that the fact that the problem re-occurred is worthy of a formal written complaint and a request for compensation.

Yes you're right.  She has been offered a modest sum and has started a formal complaint.  However, neither of these is adequate compensation for never knowing if a shopping delivery will be cancelled whilst she sleeps.

born_again

Security check at that time will be because that is when morrisons are processing the order. Payment is not taken when you place the order but once it is picked by them & put through the system.

So the issue is with retailer for their processing time. Not the bank & the security system.

Usually you get a message from retailer saying payment declined & please call to make payment again.

wmb194

Sounds like you should complain to Morrisons.

Sea_Shell

What a pain!! ☹️

Why hasn't this been all over the media before now, as this issue must effect 1000s who shop online with Morrisons and whose banking app needs verification (not just Lloyds?) before they authorise the payment.

Roy1234

born_again said:

Security check at that time will be because that is when morrisons are processing the order. Payment is not taken when you place the order but once it is picked by them & put through the system.

So the issue is with retailer for their processing time. Not the bank & the security system.

Usually you get a message from retailer saying payment declined & please call to make payment again.

born_again - yes I do realise the midnight check is because that's when Morrisons process the orders.  But my point is all online supermarkets allow you to change your order until late the evening before delivery due the next day, so surely they all must process the payment around midnight ish.  Surely the issue is Lloyds expecting anyone to respond within minutes after midnight?

Sea_Shell - I agree, and the fact it hasn't been 'all over the media' is I suspect because this is not normal behaviour for the bank; the supermarkets must all process their payments around midnight?

Astria

I've had a worse experience with TSB: Not only did they decline the payment, but the next day when I tried to send money to a friend for my part of a meal via online banking, not only did they require authorisation for that, but when I authorised the amount, a message came up saying it was "Classified as high risk", and they froze me out of online banking and told me to phone them to re-enable access, but they close at 8pm! Apparently it's not normal to send funds to someone else??? As this was the second time it's happened I've switched the account to Santander to take advantage of their switching offer. Hopefully they are not as bad.

Never had any problems with FD - yes they can sometimes say "This appears to be high risk, are you sure?", but a simple "Yes I'm sure" sends the payment through and they've never blocked me out of online banking.

phillw

Astria said:

Never had any problems with FD - yes they can sometimes say "This appears to be high risk, are you sure?", but a simple "Yes I'm sure" sends the payment through and they've never blocked me out of online banking.

What checks the banks perform are secret, so that you can't game them.

I'm sure that with all banks you can trigger the exact circumstances required to get yourself locked out, just by doing legitimate transactions.

You just haven't hit the specific circumstances yet. 

Astria

phillw said:

Astria said:

Never had any problems with FD - yes they can sometimes say "This appears to be high risk, are you sure?", but a simple "Yes I'm sure" sends the payment through and they've never blocked me out of online banking.

What checks the banks perform are secret, so that you can't game them.

I'm sure that with all banks you can trigger the exact circumstances required to get yourself locked out, just by doing legitimate transactions.

You just haven't hit the specific circumstances yet. 

The annoying thing with TSB is that I made a transaction and get booted off internet banking, so rang up and get it restored, only for the exact same transaction to cause the exact same outcome a 2nd time. Visited a branch and they apologized and said they'd left a note on my account and it wouldn't happen again, and then less than a month later it happened again!

Other banks do have similar procedures, but the most I've had (non-TSB) is when transferring 200K to a solicitor, which they blocked and then rang me up to ask what I was doing, I told them and the transaction was automatically put through without me having to retry anything. They just said it would have to go as a BACS transfer rather than FP, so would be with them the next day. They didn't lock me out though, just suspended transfers and payments until they had spoke to me.

phillw

Astria said
They didn't lock me out though, just suspended transfers and payments until they had spoke to me.

I meant locked out of doing any transfers, you can still see your balance but you just can't do anything.

Virgin did that to me recently, had to spend three hours on the phone to get it sorted (£75 compensation...)