Initially i was excited about having a new bank on the high street.

They market themselves as different to the others and I fell for it.

Now i'm stuck in a situation that's really running me down mentally.

On Tuesday,

I noticed that there were a number of transactions leaving my account for a gambling site I hold an account with that I didn't authorise.

I spoke to their live chat who locked my account and asked me to report the transactions to the police and my bank as it was believed to have been hacked.

I report the transactions to Metro Bank as soon as i could and spoke to the local police who gave me an action fraud reference number.

The employee at Metro Bank was very polite and said he would investigate as soon as he could.

Because the amount of money was quite substantial, I also emailed a customer service head I have had previous contact with.

A few hours later i get a call from a man at Metro Bank who says

"Well, I can see you gamble often".

I then tried to steer the conversation back to the fraud and he says

"I can contact them, but if i find out these transactions are yours then i'll be closing your account".

I agree

(I mean, i didn't make these transactions and i was very clear that I had used this site in the past).

I shoot an email to the customer service manager again who emails back saying he has listened to the call and he was merely informing me of the process

(He didn't really inform me, it felt more like a thinly veiled accusation but ho hum).

Next morning

i get a call from the same guy at Metro Bank saying he had heard back from the online casino and they have my name and address

(Remember, I did tell them i had opened account with them in the past).

They then say they have a record of my IP address that i use for Online Banking on their system.

Again, I don't dispute this.

He then asks me to explain why that might be.

I indicated to him again that I had opened the account in the past.

He then says that it sounded like an excuse,

he believed i was trying to defraud the bank so he would be closing my account.

I asked him why he wasn't listening to me and to speak to a manager,

His response was that he had already spoken to his manager so there was no one for me to speak to.

Again,

I email the customer service manager asking for an explanation,

He then sends over a final response saying he agrees with the commercial decision made to close my account based on the IP match and that I had gambling transactions in the past and he couldn't think of why someone would hack a gambling site account...

Now,

I understand how on the surface it would seem like a quite clear cut response.

Usually you would expect someone to play against the house and get the winnings back into their account.

But the gambling site in question specialises in Poker.

Now,

There are well known cases where poker players have had their accounts hacked and funds drained from their linked cards.

How they do this is by playing on a table with another player and losing bad hands on purpose to transfer the funds into another account.

To safeguard against this,

The sites tell you to speak to the bank and to the police so they can open a fraud investigation and also lock the funds from the poker network.

I've now had to open a case with the ombudsman and i'm in a panic as i don't have any money for my rent, nor do i have a banking facility anymore.

I've gone and applied for an account with another bank as an urgent action but i'm still down a lot of funds and i do not have the facility to dispute the transaction if the account has been closed.

The ombudsman reckon it will take weeks/months to have any kind of response.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to where i can go from here?

The gambling site in question has said they would co-operate with the bank should a fraud or dispute be opened.

Unfortunately

i've been feeling really low and anxious as a result of the disgusting treatment i've had from their staff.

They were not professional in the way they were talking to me in any way.

I've tried emailing the CEO about this and they've referred me back to the final response.

Not to try an make this case over emotional but the depression experienced from this experience nearly got the better of me a few nights ago so naturally i'm very reluctant to deal with it any more but i know if i don't do anything then things will get worse for me.

I would strongly advise that everybody avoid using Metro Bank for these reasons but i would welcome any suggestions on what i can do to speed the process up or anything i might be missing.

Ask the gambling site if they can match an IP address to what you believe to be the unauthorised transactions.

If that is not your IP address then you can re raise the complaint but you need the information.

The problem is most sites can be accessed by any number of devices as long as you have the login details, so even showing that theses transactions are not from your home static IP wont necessarily prove that it wasnt you who logged on elsewhere.

Name the site and how much is involved please.

Metrobank is annoying.

i have experience with them.

If you report fraud they will after investigating tell you that you gave your card number over even though it was cancelled before hand.

i am now in the process of moving banks.

they are also bloody annoying when trying to claim on the direct debit indemnity.

They think they cant reclaim the money and so on.

Load of cods wallop.