Blocked from my current account after following a link on MSE for easy access saver

allegro120

Bigwheels1111 said:

You are with Santander, I feel for you and the pain you may experience in the near future.

This is normal, I have 20/30 bank and savings accounts.

It always goes on when first making payments.

Some banks are better than others.

Reading on here Santander are not good.

Not in my experience. I've been with Santander for over a decade and never had payments blocked. Had it from other banks, FD, TSB, Lloyds, Al Rayan and Halifax.  However, my OH had this with Santander recently.  The same scenario, £1 to establish the connection followed by £10k straight after.

I don't believe any banks are better or worse than others, they all have to follow regulations.  I've noticed that some of them are asking exactly the same questions and once the "fraud detective" mixed up the bank that blocked my payment with the other one.  Also I've noticed in these conversations that they have no idea about the products the bank they are supposedly represent is offering, so that made me think that banks use agencies for their "fraud" tasks.

mikb

Ed-1 said:

Sending a small test payment followed by a large amount is a common tactic used by fraudsters so will often trigger fraud checks

Unfortunately, sending a small test payment followed by your ACTUAL payment is a common tactic used by cautious people to ensure the account is set up correctly.

You can't win that one ... 

Imagine setting up the account, getting a digit trapsnosed in the account number when sending, and sending 15K to a stranger. 

Now imagine the grilling from the bank "Why didn't you test a small amount first??"

allegro120

Bigwheels1111 said:

Barkin said:

Bigwheels1111 said:

It always goes on when first making payments.

You've said this before but, as I've responded previously, it doesn't.

The first 2 payments are the issue.

Be it £1 or £100 for the first, the second one is stopped or held.

Who knows its like Russian roulette.

Ive moved 85k and all was fine, £10 held fro fraud checks.

My first test £10 deposit to Chase Savings was blocked by FD.  Despite the fact that I've previously made a number of deposits to Chase Current (clearly visible on my statement) they were asking me if I'm sure that Chase is the real bank.

eskbanker

mikb said:

Imagine setting up the account, getting a digit trapsnosed in the account number...

I suppose if you're going to use 'the right letters, but not necessarily the right order', then that's the word to do it with!

allegro120

Bridlington1 said:

I've been using Santander as one of my main nominated accounts for over a year and the most stringent check they've ever done on any of my payments is sending me a OTP before making the payment (but never actually blocking it though). I've regularly bounced 4 and low 5 figure sums through the account with no issues whatsoever. 

I bounced over £250k through Lloyds in a single year before I was banned from LBG (many times more than my total savings and certainly much more than my total annual income) and they never blocked any of my payments.

HSBC froze my current account for 23 days in February 2022, Virgin froze all of my accounts for 4-5 days the following month, Halifax blocked one of my payments a few months later but since then all I've had is a few debit card payments which have required me to answer ``Yes" to a text to confirm it was me making the payment so I've been quite lucky in some respects. 

The way I see it regardless of which banks you use there is a risk of getting payments blocked at some stage so I just ensure all my banking affairs and nominated accounts are fairly spread out over multiple banks/building societies so that if one get frozen I can still access most of my money.

I use the same strategy, I don't like all eggs in one basket.  Accounts can be frozen by fraud teams or website or app can be down... 

Bridlington1

allegro120 said:

Bridlington1 said:

I've been using Santander as one of my main nominated accounts for over a year and the most stringent check they've ever done on any of my payments is sending me a OTP before making the payment (but never actually blocking it though). I've regularly bounced 4 and low 5 figure sums through the account with no issues whatsoever. 

I bounced over £250k through Lloyds in a single year before I was banned from LBG (many times more than my total savings and certainly much more than my total annual income) and they never blocked any of my payments.

HSBC froze my current account for 23 days in February 2022, Virgin froze all of my accounts for 4-5 days the following month, Halifax blocked one of my payments a few months later but since then all I've had is a few debit card payments which have required me to answer ``Yes" to a text to confirm it was me making the payment so I've been quite lucky in some respects. 

The way I see it regardless of which banks you use there is a risk of getting payments blocked at some stage so I just ensure all my banking affairs and nominated accounts are fairly spread out over multiple banks/building societies so that if one get frozen I can still access most of my money.

I use the same strategy, I don't like all eggs in one basket.  Accounts can be frozen by fraud teams or website or app can be down... 

This approach also has another advantage. I keep most of my savings in regular savers, these are linked to different banking groups so I'm less likely to find myself unable to access any money, in the process it enables me to maximise my savings interest so I get a win-win situation (plus I enjoy it all).

boingy

wiseonesomeofthetime said

Remember, it is US they are protecting by doing this, or at least that is what we are lead to believe

Make no mistake, they are protecting themselves, not us. I understand the need to temporarily block some payments but they need to be slicker and more efficient at unblocking them for the vast majority of cases (i.e. the legitimate ones). It took me over an hour to get through to Co-op and another 20 minutes of running through their ridiculous script, the irony being that any fraudster would have answered exactly as I did. It should be enough to establish our ID then ask us simply, "Are you sure that you want to make this payment and that it's going to the place you intend?". 

One of the Co-op questions was "Are you feeling more stressed or pressured than normal?" and I thought "Of course I bloody am! Some faceless person in a call centre is messing with my money."
It's about as much use as airports asking someone if they are a terrorist.

LHW99

I did have to face a grilling by first direct when trying to send money to pay for a fence - 

How did you get the bank details for sending money? - It was on the invoice I got when the fence went up

Are you sure they are a legitimate firm? Yes I've just stood by and watched them put my fence up

How do you know you are going to get the goods? Well they've just put my fence up ............

Bigwheels1111

LHW99 said:

I did have to face a grilling by first direct when trying to send money to pay for a fence - 

How did you get the bank details for sending money? - It was on the invoice I got when the fence went up

Are you sure they are a legitimate firm? Yes I've just stood by and watched them put my fence up

How do you know you are going to get the goods? Well they've just put my fence up ............

Had that exact issue with TSB.
I owned the rear right fence with right hand side neighbour, rear fence with rear neighbour.
After bad storm both needed replacing.
So had to pay the same payment twice, but with different reference numbers.
30 minutes on the phone trying to get an idiot to understand.
I said make the payment or close my account and move the 22k to my other bank.
Payment was then made.

wiseonesomeofthetime

boingy said:

wiseonesomeofthetime said

Remember, it is US they are protecting by doing this, or at least that is what we are lead to believe

Make no mistake, they are protecting themselves, not us. I understand the need to temporarily block some payments but they need to be slicker and more efficient at unblocking them for the vast majority of cases (i.e. the legitimate ones). It took me over an hour to get through to Co-op and another 20 minutes of running through their ridiculous script, the irony being that any fraudster would have answered exactly as I did. It should be enough to establish our ID then ask us simply, "Are you sure that you want to make this payment and that it's going to the place you intend?". 

One of the Co-op questions was "Are you feeling more stressed or pressured than normal?" and I thought "Of course I bloody am! Some faceless person in a call centre is messing with my money."
It's about as much use as airports asking someone if they are a terrorist.

I know! My comment was tongue-in-cheek