Bank will not give us our money

DullGreyGuy

flaneurs_lobster said:

Would it not be possible to get the buyer, seller, ownership documents and even the car all together at one bank branch?

I understand where you are coming from but the suggestion would be exceptionally difficult for the bank to deal with. No matter who you are there with they have to consider if it's a scam or not and have a duty to protect you if they think it is. By following your suggestion you would be requiring a member of bank staff in person tell another person that they think they are potentially a scammer without knowing what sort of person they are etc.  

Feels like the sort of situation the bank wouldnt want its staff to be put in and may make decisions based purely on the fact you've engineered that situation. 

flaneurs_lobster

@DullGreyGuy  I take your point, but perhaps a little more forewarning to the bank would have helped.

I bought a new car for cash (well, debit card) a couple of years ago - just under £20K. I had contacted my bank a couple of days before an told them what I was intending. They asked the amount, who the payee was and a few other details and they OK'ed everything. 

jon81uk

flaneurs_lobster said:

@DullGreyGuy  I take your point, but perhaps a little more forewarning to the bank would have helped.

I bought a new car for cash (well, debit card) a couple of years ago - just under £20K. I had contacted my bank a couple of days before an told them what I was intending. They asked the amount, who the payee was and a few other details and they OK'ed everything. 

I would say a debit card payment is significantly different to a FP/BACs transfer to a private individual.
Debit card would normally be to a business and a quote/invoice could be obtained.
Bank transfer to a private person seems suspect no matter what.

OP, can you get some kind of invoice and the DVLA details of the car to show the bank?

Richard1212

Banks are IMHO one of the most necessary evils in life. They grovel round you trying to get your business and then make it difficult for the rest of time ! In my earlier days I had similar experiences as the dreaded "fraud dept" flexed their muscles with no thought for the havoc they cause. So I sympathise with you, Brian and Margy. There are few ways to defeat the petty clerks in branches or call centre staff. It's even worse when you spend 90 minutes, as you did, and it all makes you feel ill. And telling you what you're doing may be a scam , as if you were a naughty schoolboy, without thought for your health, says it all.

Banks DO have a chink which gives customers more of a chance of coming out on top---but, sadly, it usually depends on being a wealthy customer whom they would really not want to lose. 

With one bank I have a pretentious-sounding "personal manager" who is a short phone call a way at any time.  I am also fortunate enough to have, among my different accounts with NatWest, a Premier Select Account and this account really helps iron out any such problems as above and as O/P outlines. I have access to a 24hour team of personal "bankers" and specialists ; they sort out problems such as the one you encountered within a few minutes. I have bought several new cars over the years with a simple phone call from the garage showroom to my "personal banker".

But your particular distressing experience applies to far too many people who cannot go over the heads of these glorified clerks who have little or no academic qualifications or higher education and who are not even trained in interpersonal skills. I hope your story ends well and that you will write to the CEO and tell your story in detail and ask for an explanation :  the more people who do that , the more chance ( though very slight) of any improvement in the way banks treat customers who want their money as they see fit. Banks can't hide behind the spectre of fraud or IT glitches forever. 

GibbsRule_No3.

Rob5342 said:

Have you tried getting a Starling account? They only take 10 minutes to open and tend to be much more practical about things that the old fashioned banks.

I did a test payment to a friend in the USA via Starling last night, money went through fine.  Today I sent the larger amount (she is buying internal flights for us) Starling asked me six or seven questions to check I wasn’t being pressured into sending money abroad.  I don’t actually know yet and probably won’t until Monday now, if the money will be sent.  So using Starling might not have helped.

DullGreyGuy

flaneurs_lobster said:

@DullGreyGuy  I take your point, but perhaps a little more forewarning to the bank would have helped.

I bought a new car for cash (well, debit card) a couple of years ago - just under £20K. I had contacted my bank a couple of days before an told them what I was intending. They asked the amount, who the payee was and a few other details and they OK'ed everything. 

But the advantage of paying buy card is the recipient has to have a merchant account (let's ignore Zettle etc for now). By having a merchant account the card company knows a host of things about the vendor. They know their name etc, what line of business they are in, and often more (this varies by country).  

Since the advent of companies like Zettle its slightly less clear but all of these companies limit both single transactions and aggregate initially (for random web sign ups) or go through in-depth vetting like a merchant account for larger traders. 

Add to all of this you have the chargeback process so if something does go wrong they can reclaim from the merchant account provider... transfer fraud there is no comeback, it comes from your banks own pocket

fourmarks

BrianandMargy appear to have gone for a lie down.

Section62

Richard1212 said:

There are few ways to defeat the petty clerks in branches or call centre staff.

That is unfair.  Customer-facing bank staff have a difficult job to do and have to tread a fine line between being helpful, and not doing something that FCA rules and/or bank policies prohibit.

You may see them as "petty", but could that be because you don't fully understand what their job entails?

Richard1212 said:

It's even worse when you spend 90 minutes, as you did, and it all makes you feel ill. And telling you what you're doing may be a scam , as if you were a naughty schoolboy, without thought for your health, says it all.

I'd suggest the health impact of discovering you've been scammed out of £23k would be rather more serious than being told by a bank that they have concerns that the transaction/cash withdrawal could be a scam.  You cannot say the member of staff at the bank wasn't thinking about this.

The OP is not to blame here, but unfortunately the things they have done have in part led to this situation.  Asking to withdraw £22500 in cash was never going to end well, and that had nothing to do with the OP's age.

username

GibbsRule_No3. said:

Rob5342 said:

Have you tried getting a Starling account? They only take 10 minutes to open and tend to be much more practical about things that the old fashioned banks.

I did a test payment to a friend in the USA via Starling last night, money went through fine.  Today I sent the larger amount (she is buying internal flights for us) Starling asked me six or seven questions to check I wasn’t being pressured into sending money abroad.  I don’t actually know yet and probably won’t until Monday now, if the money will be sent.  So using Starling might not have helped.

Just bear in mind Rob5342 isn't a particular fan of the large clearing banks of the UK, he always labels them as old fashioned, dinosaurs etc.

I don't think any bank worth its weight would have entertained having a new account opened, a large amount deposited in it, and then cycled out again to a third party as that would certainly trigger additional checks, which would no doubt leave you in a stickier position than you would have been currently.

In my experience banks have got tougher about managing your own money because so many have been scammed.

I recall standing in a Santander branch trying to transfer just under half of what the OP was trying to send to this car seller to one of my own savings accounts and being asked lots of questions, what is it for, are you being coerced, do you trust the person it is being sent to etc.

I did answer truthfully but I do admit I did drop a cuttingly honest statement about why at the end (the interest rate on the Santander account was carp) after they presented me with a declaration for me to read which was an A4 page of pretty much do not send this transfer if you are pressured into it, no doubt as a second nudge in case you were one of those that were coerced into it by a scammer.

I personally just wanted to get the transaction done with and out of the bank, so maybe my urgency was interpreted as a sign it was not myself that wanted to transfer the money.

Rob5342

username said:

GibbsRule_No3. said:

Rob5342 said:

Have you tried getting a Starling account? They only take 10 minutes to open and tend to be much more practical about things that the old fashioned banks.

I did a test payment to a friend in the USA via Starling last night, money went through fine.  Today I sent the larger amount (she is buying internal flights for us) Starling asked me six or seven questions to check I wasn’t being pressured into sending money abroad.  I don’t actually know yet and probably won’t until Monday now, if the money will be sent.  So using Starling might not have helped.

Just bear in mind Rob5342 isn't a particular fan of the large clearing banks of the UK, he always labels them as old fashioned, dinosaurs etc.

It's just my experience of them, stuck in their old awkward ways when newer banks can manage to do the same things much more efficiently. I'm not saying Starling wouldn't question it, but maybe they would have a more practical way of dealing with it.

Asking questions and delaying the trasnfer so checks can be made is fair enough, but it seems wrong that you can't transfer the money if you are absolutely insistent that it's what you want to do.