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This w/e I am "debanked" (now resolved after a 90 hours' wait and many calls. Complaint underway)
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Those services don't typically get frozen for fraud suspicion though and it's very normal to have a broadband connection and a separate phone service for internet backup for example.
If a bank freezes an account for suspicion of fraud, why would they have to pay a daily compensation and how would they pay it if the account was frozen? They are required by the regulators and law to do it so would be quite wrong to make a private business pay customers for something they are meant to do at risk of fines if they don't.
Sam Vimes' Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness:
People are rich because they spend less money. A poor man buys $10 boots that last a season or two before he's walking in wet shoes and has to buy another pair. A rich man buys $50 boots that are made better and give him 10 years of dry feet. The poor man has spent $100 over those 10 years and still has wet feet.
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Indeed, but nobody is disputing that they must act in case of suspected fraud, but doesn't mean that they leave you with no access to money for 5 days.
I now have a card with another because of the bank switching, so it is a recent addition (about 2 years or so). I also have a brand new credit card now because I needed to hire a car. Had this fracas happened in, say 2023, I am not quite sure how I would have coped as even then I had already well stopped using cash.
Anyway, let's see what happens with my complaint...
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Modern banks like Starling and Monzo let you set up virtual cards in the app which you can add to your Google or Apple wallet.
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If a bank freezes an account for suspicion of fraud, why would they have to pay a daily compensation and how would they pay it if the account
was frozen? They are required by the regulators and law to do it so would be quite wrong to make a private business pay customers for something they are meant to do at risk of fines if they don't.The issue isn't about them having to do something, it is about how efficiently they do what they are having to do. In other words the compensation wouldn't be for (wrongly) blocking the account, but rather taking an unreasonable length of time to investigate and unblock.
To expand on the utility comparison - you won't get compensation because a tree has fallen on the electicity supply line and cut off your power, but you will if the power company hasn't restored the supply within the regulated timescale.
The OP's situation seems fairly straightforward… a bank shouldn't need several days to confirm the payment sum was an error and unrelated to fraud.
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There is little incentive for banks to make it a priority once an account / card is frozen.
The only real way is compensation / fines, once it starts costing them more in those than staff costs, they will act.Let's Be Careful Out There1 -
It really bugged me the way I was stonewalled. Nobody knew what was going on (or so they said), and no one seemed to care. They have three phrases to use (I apologize for the inconvenience, it will be resolved as soon as possible, I understand your frustration) and no other vocabulary to speak of. The mysterious fraud team is some sort of cloistered order that may not be spoken to or have direct contact with either staff or public, except by email.
The last girl I spoke to, I asked what her job description was and after thinking about it for some time she told me "deal with frauds and reactivate cards", so I am not that clear why she was in the office at all...
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Yup it certainly should do that, it seems ridiculous that the authorisation (ie fingerprint or whatever) comes before seeing the amount, particularly when there's no limit. Of those 400 transaction how many of them were by phone do you think?
I guess people may not be aware that phone payments have no limit, I certainly wasn't, but I don't use phone payments, can't see the point when I have cards. And after this thread I definitely won't ever start using phone payments unless they improve the system!
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I'm not talking about whether to investigate the fraud (though separately I do think its excessive and the responsibility shouldn't be so heavily on banks).
My point is more generally on the excess time beyond what is reasonable to investigate or address whatever went wrong. If the bank decides to hire a very thin staff who can't attend to your investigation, that negatively impacts the customer while the bank could just take their sweet time.
CF with a broadband company, BB went down (turns out someone disconnected the wrong service - fine, stuff happens, the regulator allows 48 hours to resolve). It took them weeks to even send someone out to investigate, due to their chosen staffing levels, and had to pay me a daily compensation after the 48 hours. Its not enough compo that I'd ever pick the money over having connectivity, as I spent more in travel as I couldn't work from home, no entertainment at home, etc. But at least it was some incentive for them to send someone out weeks and not months later, plus halfway through send out a mobile hotspot so I had something.
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it seems ridiculous that the authorisation (ie fingerprint or whatever) comes before seeing the amount,
But it doesn't. One can ask the vendor to see the amount before you even take your 'phone (or card) out of your pocket/handbag/whatever.
The issue is people flashing their 'phone/card to authorise payment without looking to see what it is they're authorising.
If they (the vendor) don't show the amount - just ask them to. If the setup is such that it's not easy - tough. I still want to see it.
As I said before, authorising a payment without seeing the amount is plain bonkers.
Would you put your card & PIN into a reader if you didn't know the amount being debited?
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With today's technology, you don't need a physical card. Just use Google/ApplePay which is essentially accepted everywhere. But this doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to have an alternative personal means of paying. Cash / a credit card / a second current account, VISA and Mastercard etc is just a sensible precaution against all sorts of issues that can occur, from blocked accounts to network outages and bank blackouts (as we have seen with TSB and Natwest in recent years).
The delay in removing the block from the OP's account is a really weird one. I have my main account with Santander, whose fraud team are available 24 x 7, and whilst it is a bit of a pain to have to contact them, on the few occasions I had to call them in the last decade, they always resolved the issue in the first call, admittedly after interrogations resembling the Spanish Inquisition 😂. It can also be difficult but it is essential to keep your cool when talking to the fraud department. I am surprised that other banks don't appear to have a similarly helpful operation.2
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