HSBC blocked account after mortgage deposit

boingy

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I expected the DDs to still work OK even though account access was blocked. It's crazy for them not to honour existing DDs as that's bound to cause problems.

They could be used to extract money to other accounts, though, as some savings accounts can pull DDs. You could also spend money with e.g., retailers when not entitled to i.e. because the money was stolen.

We can all think of ways people can misuse things but a DD for your car tax or for your household bills are unlikely to be the chosen method for fraud but are guaranteed to cause grief for the customer if they are not paid on time. This thread is another innocent person being assumed guilty by a bank and having their normal life "suspended" for an indefinite time. Why didn't the bank contact their customer and ask them some questions? They just assume everyone is guilty and then hide behind their procedures. The argument goes that they don't want to give a fraudster any more info but if you are a fraudster and the bank blocks the account you've got to be pretty stupid to not figure it out!

(BTW, until just now I didn't know you could DD your car tax).

MPs and society more generally want banks to combat fraud so complain to them, I guess. They have to move quickly when they see something suspicious and as DDs are a way to withdraw money they're refused. When you have millions of customers to monitor it'll take a while to get around to questioning those you've blocked. This is why it's a good idea to have multiple accounts, credit cards and money dotted around.

We shouldn't need to take such actions and you should not be so quick to defend the unreasonable actions of the (very rich) banks. Too many people on this forum are too quick to blindly defend the banks and are too quick to assume that everyone who complains on here is a scammer The banks are getting the balance wrong and it's purely to defend their profits rather than any more noble intention. Wait until it happens to you and see how you feel.

norm_

It's ludicrous there isn't a system in place to pre-warn banks of incoming large payments for things like deposits, so they can challenge and query it before resorting to ridiculous measures of locking customers out of accounts.

I had a similar but not as drastic experience with Lloyds who decided they wanted me to go into the bank to release the funds I was sending to my First Direct account to send to my solicitor, a couple days before I was due to complete just because it's over their arbitrary limit.

The amount from Lloyds was only a fraction of the entire amount, yet First Direct sent the whole sum no issue after speaking to them on the phone.

kaMelo

Shakin_Steve said:

I was under the impression that banks had to give you access to your wages whether they were investigating or not. Am I wrong?

No you're not wrong.
Whilst they may be complying with their statutory duties you are not expected to live on fresh air. Even with a blocked account you can access wages/salary/benefit payments made into the account. You will probably have to go to branch with suitable ID along with documentary evidence of where the money has come from (payslips/benefit statement) and they should allow you to withdraw this money whilst their investigations are ongoing concerning the rest.

Officer_Dibble

Voyager2002 said:

Sadly, HSBC complied with the law and no compensation is due.

This kind of thing can happen to anyone, at any time and with any bank. All you can do is maintain accounts with several different banks and spread your money between them, so that if one account is frozen you can still continue using funds in a different bank.

It's incredible that anyone's willing to stick up for HSBC on this. They're one of the worst for doing this kind of thing to ordinary people doing normal things (and also make it incredibly hard to run charity accounts as I've previously found myself) while allowing money laundering on a massive scale by drugs cartels. Most banks don't do this, because they're better at their job.

friolento

norm_ said:

It's ludicrous there isn't a system in place to pre-warn banks of incoming large payments for things like deposits, so they can challenge and query it before resorting to ridiculous measures of locking customers out of accounts.

What do you think money launderers would do if there was a system to pre-warn banks of incoming large payments?

Officer_Dibble

The money launderers would ring to pre-warn but fail the pre-authorisation because they hadn't got decent proof of funding, track record as an account holder or reason for the transfer. Quite straightforward.

eskbanker

Officer_Dibble said:

Voyager2002 said:

Sadly, HSBC complied with the law and no compensation is due.

This kind of thing can happen to anyone, at any time and with any bank. All you can do is maintain accounts with several different banks and spread your money between them, so that if one account is frozen you can still continue using funds in a different bank.

It's incredible that anyone's willing to stick up for HSBC on this. They're one of the worst for doing this kind of thing to ordinary people doing normal things (and also make it incredibly hard to run charity accounts as I've previously found myself) while allowing money laundering on a massive scale by drugs cartels. Most banks don't do this, because they're better at their job.

I'm not 'sticking up for HSBC' but would simply observe that it's hardly surprising that a business given massive fines for weak AML controls will then proceed to strengthen them!

eDicky

eskbanker said:

Officer_Dibble said:

Voyager2002 said:

Sadly, HSBC complied with the law and no compensation is due.

This kind of thing can happen to anyone, at any time and with any bank. All you can do is maintain accounts with several different banks and spread your money between them, so that if one account is frozen you can still continue using funds in a different bank.

It's incredible that anyone's willing to stick up for HSBC on this. They're one of the worst for doing this kind of thing to ordinary people doing normal things (and also make it incredibly hard to run charity accounts as I've previously found myself) while allowing money laundering on a massive scale by drugs cartels. Most banks don't do this, because they're better at their job.

I'm not 'sticking up for HSBC' but would simply observe that it's hardly surprising that a business given massive fines for weak AML controls will then proceed to strengthen them!

Absolutely correct, it's not surprising at all. But what is surprising for me at least is that a huge bank such as HSBC, or we could say the UK banking system as a whole, appears unable or unwilling to develop and implement system algorithms and processes that can successfully identify instances of fraud and money laundering without the myriad of obvious false positives that are regularly impinging on the lives of innocent people simply carrying out their everyday banking needs plus occasional uncharacteristic actions such as in this case.

The human resources that could easily identify such false positives in a much more timely manner also appear to be lacking, for a bank with enough apparent financial strength that it should be able to remedy this, if they considered it to be of any priority.

GeoffTF

kaMelo said:

Shakin_Steve said:

I was under the impression that banks had to give you access to your wages whether they were investigating or not. Am I wrong?

No you're not wrong.
Whilst they may be complying with their statutory duties you are not expected to live on fresh air. Even with a blocked account you can access wages/salary/benefit payments made into the account. You will probably have to go to branch with suitable ID along with documentary evidence of where the money has come from (payslips/benefit statement) and they should allow you to withdraw this money whilst their investigations are ongoing concerning the rest.

The OP said that he had an HSBC credit card that he was using to pay his bills. Perhaps that is relevant here.

Nasqueron

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I expected the DDs to still work OK even though account access was blocked. It's crazy for them not to honour existing DDs as that's bound to cause problems.

They could be used to extract money to other accounts, though, as some savings accounts can pull DDs. You could also spend money with e.g., retailers when not entitled to i.e. because the money was stolen.

We can all think of ways people can misuse things but a DD for your car tax or for your household bills are unlikely to be the chosen method for fraud but are guaranteed to cause grief for the customer if they are not paid on time. This thread is another innocent person being assumed guilty by a bank and having their normal life "suspended" for an indefinite time. Why didn't the bank contact their customer and ask them some questions? They just assume everyone is guilty and then hide behind their procedures. The argument goes that they don't want to give a fraudster any more info but if you are a fraudster and the bank blocks the account you've got to be pretty stupid to not figure it out!

(BTW, until just now I didn't know you could DD your car tax).

MPs and society more generally want banks to combat fraud so complain to them, I guess. They have to move quickly when they see something suspicious and as DDs are a way to withdraw money they're refused. When you have millions of customers to monitor it'll take a while to get around to questioning those you've blocked. This is why it's a good idea to have multiple accounts, credit cards and money dotted around.

We shouldn't need to take such actions and you should not be so quick to defend the unreasonable actions of the (very rich) banks. Too many people on this forum are too quick to blindly defend the banks and are too quick to assume that everyone who complains on here is a scammer The banks are getting the balance wrong and it's purely to defend their profits rather than any more noble intention. Wait until it happens to you and see how you feel.

The banks obviously err on the side of caution, however, given our regulators have made it so banks have to foot the bill when people take part in the most obvious scams because they got greedy, it's not really surprising they want to be careful. If someone gets a phone call saying their bank has been hacked and they need to move the money to a completely different bank and after all the years of banks incessantly reminding them it's 100% a scam, and do it anyway; or indeed are daft enough to invest in cold calls about crypto scams and get greedy when they see fake gains etc etc, they should lose the money, not have the bank refund them. The actions of those people, and the unwillingness to make people see the hard truth and so force banks to refund them, is a major reason behind all this. Obviously banks have also been unethical and poor on things like AML but have equally been given massive fines for doing so, so are making it harder to do this as well.