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The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread
Comments
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MonBS
Yes, they will action your withdrawal request on Monday. You should be able to open a new issue 8 RS, transfer £500 and withdraw the rest.
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No longer pending. Thanks for all the responses.
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Even internal transfers are "pending" with Virgin. Quite annoying
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NatWest/RBS/Ulster and Buckinghamshire BS payment issues / fraud checks
I have finally received a response to the complaint I made to NatWest about mine (and others') issues making payments to BBS accounts. Thought it might be of interest to some on here. Using a spoiler tag to reduce clutter for those not interested!
My Understanding
I understand there are multiple issues to your complaint:
• Issue 1- You are unhappy that your payment had been stopped for a further security check with our Fraud Team.
• Issue 2- You feel frustrated because our Fraud Team made outbound contact to discuss the payment, despite the bank advising not to trust these calls.
• Issue 3- You are unhappy that the Fraud Team asked you additional questions about your payment.My Investigation
Issue 1
• I can confirm a restriction was placed on your payment of £250.00 as a fraud prevention measure on the [DATE REMOVED]. There is an increasing risk of fraud at the present time, and we have several measures to combat this. These are not intended to inconvenience our customers but are meant to help protect both you and the bank from potential fraud.• To explain further, every time that you use your card, make, or receive a payment either in the UK, ROI or abroad the transaction receives a risk score. Various factors make up the score and for security reasons I cannot divulge them. The factors are constantly updated to reflect the latest fraud intelligence. I am unable to clarify what exact fraud parameters triggered the fraud alert again for security reasons but suffice to say they change daily.
• Following my investigation, I am sorry I am unable to agree with your complaint regarding the restriction placed on your payment. The Bank is committed to doing all we can to protect our customers from potential fraud and signpost how we may restrict usage on your account in our terms and conditions. You can find this under section 5.3 of your Terms and Conditions, if you would like to view this in full please visit: www.natwest.com/current-accounts/terms-and-conditions.htmlIssue 2
• As part of our standard fraud prevention process, when a payment is identified for additional review, our Fraud Team will need to speak with you to discuss the account activity and the payment being made. This is to ensure that the transaction is genuine and that there are no fraud or scam concerns before the payment is authorised.
• We appreciate that these checks can sometimes be inconvenient for customers. To minimise this inconvenience, where possible we will attempt outbound contact. This process will usually involve a text message being sent first to advise that a stop or restriction has been placed on the account and that a member of our Fraud Team may be contacting you. This is then followed by a telephone call from the team.
• We also advise customers that if they are unsure whether a call is genuine, they should not proceed with the conversation and instead contact us using a trusted telephone number, such as one published on our website or shown on the back of their card. We are always happy for customers to verify our contact in this way.
• Having reviewed the circumstances, I am satisfied that the process was followed correctly in this instance. The outbound contact was made in line with our fraud prevention procedures and therefore I am unable to conclude that a bank error has occurred.Issue 3
• Due to the increase in scams, we are required to ask customers a number of questions about payments they are attempting to make. This is to ensure that the payment is genuine and that the funds are being sent to the correct account. All agents have a duty of care to take reasonable steps to understand the payment to help protect customers from fraud and financial crime.
• As discussed during your call with our Fraud Team on [DATE REMOVED], the agent explained that concerns had been identified due to several factors, including an increase to your payment limit, and the addition of a new payee. As a result, further security checks were required before the payment could be authorised.
• I appreciate that these questions may have felt frustrating. However, once a Faster Payment is authorised and processed, the funds leave your account immediately and cannot usually be recalled. It is therefore important that we satisfy ourselves that the payment is genuine and that you understand where the funds are being sent before releasing them.
• This is a standard process that applies across the bank whenever a payment is identified for additional security checks. Having reviewed the circumstances, I am satisfied that the member of staff followed the correct process in asking additional questions about your payment, and I cannot agree that any error occurred in relation to the handling of this payment.My Response
• I apologise for any frustration that was caused by this experience. However, following my investigation, I have been unable to agree that any errors have occurred in relation to the handling of your payment.
• I do appreciate that this had caused you inconvenience, so to help put things right, I have credited £30.00 to your account as a gesture of goodwill.
• I am unable to comment on any security checks or restrictions that may apply to other customers' accounts, as this information is confidential. I hope the explanation above has clarified that payments are monitored against fraud and scam risks. Where a payment is identified as requiring further review, additional checks may be completed before it can be authorised.
• As fraud risks and trends continually change, I cannot guarantee that future payments will not be stopped for additional checks. If a payment is flagged by our fruad systems, we may need to contact you or ask further questions as part of our standard fraud prevention process.
• I also note your concerns that your call with the Fraud Team was with an outsourced team. As a bank we do not operate any call centres outside of mainland UK and the member of staff you had spoken with was located within our Manchester offices.
• I hope my explanations above clarify matters for you and explain what has happened and why. You don’t need to take any further action now, but please let me know if there’s something I’ve not considered or any additional information you’d like to talk through. Thank you for sharing your experience and giving me the opportunity to reply. We value your opinion and use customer feedback to help us shape future change.They seem to have side-stepped the part of my complaint regarding this seeming to be a NatWest/RBS/Ulster Bank-specific issue with Buckinghamshire BS accounts specifically, which seemed to occur on a systemic basis given the number of comments on here. They also claim their call centre team are all UK based - other sources online disagree, and I still think the call with their fraud team was far from a reassuring process (everything about that experience was ringing "this is a scam" alarm bells to me!). However I can appreciate they won't want to discuss the details of the screening checks too openly, so hopefully they've taken these points on board.
Since my payment this month went through fine I am hoping this isn't an issue that will reoccur to me. It would be interesting to see if anyone has the same issue making their first payment to BBS from NatWest/RBS/Ulster Bank in the future to see if they've adjusted anything within the screening system (it's also possible Buckinghamshire have raised this with them at their end, as they told me they would do). I will take the £30 and move on!
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NatWest / RBS group & Bucks BS
Almost a verbatim (and in parts, totally verbatim) response received from RBS about the same. Although, I was offered nothing by way of compensation.5 -
Virgin Money Pending Transaction
Annoying indeed.
I deposited a small amount of cash into my VM current account which immediately showed as available fund so I transferred it out to another bank. Next day I received a warning email saying I had used my unauthorised overdraft facility and would be charged xxxxx% of interest if I didn’t put that money back in. Upon checking, that cash deposit still had a pending status against it, even though it was clearly shown as an available fund.I only had VM current account to qualify for regular saver. I now remind myself to never use it to feed my VM regular saver, always send funds directly to it.
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I'm rather surprised by that. The system ought not to let you transfer unavailable funds. I'm sure it would not have let you proceed if the pending transfer was not sent and the balance was genuinely zero. I've always bypassed the current account personally.
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NatWest/RBS/Ulster and Buckinghamshire BS payment issues / fraud checksI received a similar response to my complaint after being referred to the fraud squad for the fourth successive month.
They ignored the crux of the problem- i.e. Tbe Buckinghamshire Buiilding Society and payments to it are treated as a scam or fraudulent for whatever reason by their fraud department.
For them to pay compensation implies they know they were wrong!
I think I will raise a complaint on the response I received.
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I'm sure the value that this thread and Bridlington1 provide is such that you can tolerate an occasional off topic post about their life events, usually accompanying contextual information about delayed listings.
I'd also like to remind you of the no-chat thread which may better suit your requirements 🙂
If you want me to definitely see your reply, please tag me @forumuser7 Thank you.
N.B. (Amended from Forum Rules): You must investigate, and check several times, before you make any decisions or take any action based on any information you glean from any of my content, as nothing I post is advice, rather it is personal opinion and is solely for discussion purposes. I research before my posts, and I never intend to share anything that is misleading, misinforming, or out of date, but don't rely on everything you read. Some of the information changes quickly, is my own opinion or may be incorrect. Verify anything you read before acting on it to protect yourself because you are responsible for any action you consequently make... DYOR, YMMV etc.16 -
Or you could just let them know you are unsatisfied with their handling of the existing complaint, with a view to eliciting a final response so you can escalate.
The main issue here, as I see it, is not that a payment was randomly selected for closer scrutiny, which can happen at any time, it is the fact that a specific payee was repeatedly singled out after you had already satisfied them it was genuine (and have your own proof that the funds successfully arrived). The effect of which is that they are failing to observe proper standards of market conduct by interfering with your consumer relationship with one of their competitiors. Whether that is deliberate or inadvertent.
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