DVLA Direct Debit fraud

rabbituk

I manage my 86 year old father's account with Nationwide. I have an LPA registered with them. Approximately 4 weeks ago when I logged into his Nationwide internet banking portal in order to pay a care invoice, I noticed that there were 13 direct debit transactions from the DVLA for unfamiliar vehicles - generally small monthly tax amounts that added up to just under £200. After 2 weeks of back and forth with Nationwide including a branch visit because they insisted my father needed to be present to convince them that at 86 he hadn't just purchased all these new vehicles, they did refund the amounts- he is unable to authenticate over the telephone due to his stage of dementia. The DVLA DD mandate to the DVLA was also cancelled and they said any new attempts to setup transactions would be flagged.

Fast forward to today and there are new transactions. I am already at my wits end having to clean up accidents every morning and I don't have the time and energy to deal with this. How can I stop his nonsense from happening other than closing his account?

Ayr_Rage

Report the fraud to the police, if you have the vehicle details they may be able to associate them with other criminal activity involving those same vehicles.

Ask NW to provide a new account and transfer over all banking to that as the current account details are obviously compromised.

NanookOfTheNorth

I dont think you can stop new direct debit mandates being setup on a current account, only that you could keep an eye on the account online or via the Nationwide app and cancel straight away any you dont know about

But as all these have been through DVLA, is it worth doing a webchat with them and explaining the situation - they may be able to put a block on new direct debit mandates being setup with a specific sort code and account number. Again I don’t know if that’s possible or just a waste of time trying to discuss with them. Hopefully they would be interested if it's fraudulent transactions.

There's a webchat option in the link below after the questions..

https://www.gov.uk/contact-the-dvla

Car_54

When you say "new transactions" do you mean "new attempts"?

As you've cancelled the VDD mandate, they shouldn't pay them, and you should have nothing to worry about.

But I'd still keep an eye on them!

eskbanker

I manage my 86 year old father's account with Nationwide. I have an LPA registered with them.

[…]

After 2 weeks of back and forth with Nationwide including a branch visit because they insisted my father needed to be present to convince them that at 86 he hadn't just purchased all these new vehicles, they did refund the amounts

Log at least one formal complaint with Nationwide - the fact that they insisted on your father visiting a branch completely misses the point of the LPA arrangements.

rabbituk

By new transactions, I mean that new direct debit transactions using new direct debit mandates. Looking tonight, 10 new direct debit mandates unrelated to the previous fraudulent set have been setup since I last logged in. When I went into the branch on Friday 9th October they cancelled all of the DVLA mandates including 2 which were legitimate but those were used only annually so I accepted that I would need to set those up again. I've cancelled these new DD mandates but I guess there will be more rounds of whack-a-mole and of course I still need to put in the claim for the refund.

With NW's poor fraud check in relation to DDs (I think that they should be questioning an 86 year old suddenly buying lots of cars), I fear that changing the account number will be the only way to solve it. For about a year somebody has been calling on the landline purporting to be from NW fraud department and giving the account number and fishing for more information. However my Dad cannot answer the phone because he is largely immobile and I've never entertained the guy - I recognise his voice each time even though the CLI number varies and simply hang up.

Changing the account number is complicated because there are various payments going into the account every month from different people so they would all need to be updated as well as the associated contracts which stipulate the account number.

I did contact the DVLA via webchat regarding this and they simply said 'If you do not recognise the vehicle, or you have not authorised this Direct Debit, please contact your bank for further assistance'. I was shocked at the lack of accountability of this response so asked them if they really were not interested in fraudulent activity and they replied with 'my colleague has given the correct advise [sic]'.

marcia_

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82178921#Comment_82178921

use the bank switching service and all direct debits and payments will be changed over. You would still need to update providers of all in streams but no rush as payment into the old account will be transferred to the new account for a set period.

beckstar1975

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82179037#Comment_82179037

surely any fraudulent ones would just be transferred over too?

Mildly_Miffed

Just invoke the DD guarantee, and cancel the DDs.

Given you have PoA registered with them, I presume you have your own ID for online banking, so it's easy to monitor. Do you get notified of new DDs being set up? That should be eminently possible.

I've just logged into the Nationwide app, and the first thing I got was a splashscreen telling me that you can soon get notifications of ALL transactions.

This is much more of a https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/budgeting-bank-accounts question than a car one. The fact the DDs are DVLA VED is not the issue here.

J63320

On the debt free wannabe forum, people who want to cancel DDs to creditors are advised to move to a new account without using the switching service, because creditors can get DDs reinstated if it’s done that way. I assume that it’s because the old and new accounts have to be linked in case transactions for the old account arrive after the switch has taken place. It may be worth checking before you switch - maybe someone more knowledgable could say whether a new DD set up on the old account would automatically be routed through to the old one?
It would be a shame for the OP to go through a switch, only to find that the problem was still occurring.

marcia_

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82179096#Comment_82179096

if I had a brain