Lloyds Bank – Midnight Security Checks?

born_again

Astria said:

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.

Sadly computers do not read notes on systems. They just on the rules they are programed with.

Roy1234

Sadly computers do not read notes on systems. They just on the rules they are programed with.

Bringing us back to my post, I quite agree with the above statement.  Do you think some banks may have a program saying 'do not send security prompts when most people are asleep', as no one can control when a vendor anywhere in the world may post the final transaction, whereas some banks like Lloyds just haven't applied such a rule?  Otherwise online food shoppers everywhere would be complaining about midnight cancellations.

Astria

phillw said:

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...)

That I don't mind so much, but TSB kicked me out and wouldn't even let me login each time! So I had no idea what even my balances were, which then meant that a DD bounced and charged me £17.50 because I thought there was enough money in the account but couldn't check, and couldn't transfer funds from the savings account because I couldn't login! So I thought the best decision was to move the account elsewhere. Since then I now always have multiple accounts with different providers.

Astria

Roy1234 said:

Sadly computers do not read notes on systems. They just on the rules they are programed with.

Bringing us back to my post, I quite agree with the above statement.  Do you think some banks may have a program saying 'do not send security prompts when most people are asleep', as no one can control when a vendor anywhere in the world may post the final transaction, whereas some banks like Lloyds just haven't applied such a rule?  Otherwise online food shoppers everywhere would be complaining about midnight cancellations.

I think some banks treat recurring transactions different to normal transactions. For example, I have some subscription payments which are paid in foreign currency, Lloyds bank accepted the request when I was at the PC (and could prove it was me) but declined the automatic transaction the following month, I now use a credit card which just accepts it each month. Likewise, FD advertised "Leave your wallet at home and just use your phone", but started declining transactions with my phone a few days later ("You need to take your card too for when the transaction fails", they said, so going against what they said previously). I now use Chase which has never declined or requested a PIN entry, and I've spent upto £95 in a single transaction using that.

Mr.Generous

Online banking. Great when it all works, incredibly frustrating when something goes wrong and the way they can lock you out and stop cards is scary. A wise precaution is to have at least 2 different banks in play because you never know. Very informative thread thanks.

Roy1234

I think some banks treat recurring transactions different to normal transactions. For example, I have some subscription payments which are paid in foreign currency, Lloyds bank accepted the request when I was at the PC (and could prove it was me) but declined the automatic transaction the following month, I now use a credit card which just accepts it each month. Likewise, FD advertised "Leave your wallet at home and just use your phone", but started declining transactions with my phone a few days later ("You need to take your card too for when the transaction fails", they said, so going against what they said previously). I now use Chase which has never declined or requested a PIN entry, and I've spent upto £95 in a single transaction using that.

That's quite a messy picture you paint.  I appreciate that anti-fraud algorithms are evolving and secretive, but it seems very hit and miss.  Most of us can accept security challenges at random times as a fact of life, I suppose the issue here is timing given only minutes allowed to respond and that once a shopping delivery is cancelled for the next day, it's quite a big inconvenience compared with say a slight delay dispatching some consumer electronics.  The card used was a Mastercard incidentally.

What I was expecting to hear as responses were countless others caught in the same food delivery overnight validation trap, regardless of supermarket and bank.  But the lack of these still makes me wonder if Lloyds are challenging more indiscriminately than others?

born_again

Roy1234 said:

What I was expecting to hear as responses were countless others caught in the same food delivery overnight validation trap, regardless of supermarket and bank.  But the lack of these still makes me wonder if Lloyds are challenging more indiscriminately than others?

Banks are only allowed a certain % of genuine transactions being blocked. Step over it & they can face fines. So best guess is they are seeing a lot of fraud towards this retailer. Or it is the way they are processing the payment.
Daft as it seems fraudsters do target them.

At one point one retailer used to process their online transactions as swiped (card present) as a way to avoid chargebacks. Soon got caught out & their merchant bank were not best impressed by their actions.

subjecttocontract

I'm guessing you all pay for your supermarket shopping by debit card transaction ? I've never done that. I shop online at Tesco, pay with my American Express credit card and never had a problem.

Astria

subjecttocontract said:

I'm guessing you all pay for your supermarket shopping by debit card transaction ? I've never done that. I shop online at Tesco, pay with my American Express credit card and never had a problem.

Credit card are definitely better and less likely to be blocked, but the best credit card I have is 0.25% cashback, whilst my debit card is 1% cashback, plus roundup to the nearest pound going into a 5% savings account.

Roy1234

subjecttocontract said:

I'm guessing you all pay for your supermarket shopping by debit card transaction ? I've never done that. I shop online at Tesco, pay with my American Express credit card and never had a problem.

No we only ever use MasterCard online, due to the historically higher protection for customers than Debit Cards, not sure what the difference is nowadays though.  So the above blocked transactions were both Lloyds MasterCard.  I agree I would have expected less trouble with that than a Debit card.