A few weeks after I last wrote I was dismayed to receive my bank statement and about £4,000 had gone out. This has now been sorted out and I have the money back but what a palaver!
Firstly, I can’t believe they queried one tiny transaction of about £14 and let 2 huge ones go out from some obviously bogus Australian outfit.(Having gone through my statement carefully, it looks like there were a couple of small dodgy transactions in fact.I gather this is quite common as they’re testing out to see if you notice before hitting you with the big ones).
Secondly, why is the fraud dept. closed after 5 in the evening and at weekends?I wasn’t aware criminals kept regular 9-5 hours.
Thirdly, why is it impossible to speak to someone who is actually based in England?In the event, I decided to ring the local branch who said (as I expected) that all they could do if I went down there was ring the fraud dept.themselves. After some chat, the woman said she’d ring them for me on Monday morning and assured me it would get sorted and agreed they were idiots letting those transactions go through just after they’d queried me on some piddly ones which I had made
Whilst buying some stuff off Amazon.co.uk on Tuesday evening, I was not aware that my purchase were actually going through as 3 separate transactions until I had completed the check out procedure.An hour or so later, my personal mobile rang (which is unusual as I have a works mobile which is the one I use most often and only my partner uses the personal number when he knows I won’t be home).On answering the call, a robot told me that this was a security call from Abbey and I was very confused as to why they had used this number and not my landline for a start, and then the robot proceeded to ask a couple of security questions and I started to wonder if this was a scam call, but the questions didn’t result in me giving away incriminating personal information so I held on.Then it asked me if I could verify the last 5 transactions on my card.The first amount they reeled off meant nothing to me as (I found out later) it was a third party company using the Amazon marketplace and the amount included postage which I wasn’t expecting.I pressed a button to talk to an actual person, who turned out to be in Bangalore or somewhere and I told him I didn’t understand why I had got this call nor why it had come through to a mobile number I barely use.He said that as I was suspicious, I should hang up and ring the freephone number on the back of my bank card.I did this and was given a number of options by another robot, none of which matched my query.They gave me another number to ring and so I rang that and again was not given any options that matched my query and the robot told me that I had made an ‘invalid choice’.
I got my bank statement out and checked the number that was on this for telephone banking and eventually got through to another person.I tried to explain to him that I had been making quite a few purchases on my card in addition to that evening; after all, my partner’s birthday was coming up and I was going on holiday soon so I had been buying presents and clothes – what’s weird about that?He started to ask me to verify specific transactions some of which I could, but one or two I couldn’t, again because I didn’t recognize the actual company names or exact amounts where postage had been added.I asked him to hold on a minute while I checked on my computer.I went to my e-mail account and found that 2 transactions had been declined.I told him this and he just said yes that was the bank’s doing.I tried to explain these were small amounts and again tried to explain that I had been buying stuff.Also, most of the transactions were for small amounts.Because I couldn’t confirm exact details of one or two small transactions, he said my card had been stopped and I had to ring the fraud department.I rang them and they shut at 5 o’clock.What madness is this?Don’t they expect fraud outside normal office hours?
The next day I was going to go to the bank first thing but guess what?On Wednesdays they don’t open until 10.00 by which time I had meeting commitments at work so had to wait until lunchtime.It did get sorted out, but after half an hour of the lady in the bank making calls and I had to speak to them myself again and was still being asked the same stupid questions to verify relatively minor transactions.I understand the bank wants to prevent fraud but this procedure seems ludicrous to me when I could show that I was in possession of my card and had been buying stuff, as I say, mainly small transactions.Sort out your customer service, please, Abbey!
it's been a while since I did this blog mainly due to lack of interest... I have now (belatedly) got into facebook and now flock so got inspired to start again and give this social networking lark a bit of a go! Will be back soon!
