Advice Re: Nat West Fraud Enquiry

[Lindsey123]

Hi, I am in dispute with my bank, I have raised a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman but they have rejected my complaint.

 

I realise that it is easy to become very polarised when you are dealing with a dispute in person so I wonder if anyone could give their own impartial view.

 

I am a self employed plumber, most of my work is domestic and most of my customers pay by bank transfer.

 

I recently quoted a job, the customer accepted the quote, I did the work, invoiced the customer who promptly paid by bank transfer.

 

About two weeks later my personal account, my personal savings account, my business current account and a credit card were all frozen by my bank meaning I couldn't trade for 3 days.

 

It turned out that my customer had got a bank statement and failed to recognise the payment to me so rang his bank to get further details of the transaction.

 

His bank called my bank who immediately started a fraud investigation and froze my accounts.

 

I have banked with the same organisation for over 10 years, I have an impeccable banking history, my credit rating is in the top 10% of the country and I have over £40000.00 in available funds with my bank.

 

I have claimed the sum of £1600 as way of compensation as his represents my loss of earnings whilst the accounts were frozen, these losses are as a result of not being able to buy materials, buy fuel or pay wages.

 

The Ombudsman’s position is that the bank have acted reasonably, they have mentioned some very catch-all phrases like "standard banking practice" etc but have given no specific regulations or guidelines that the bank should follow.

 

I feel the decision is unfair for the following reasons:

 

1 The bank failed to consider my excellent and long lived banking history and  my excellent credit rating.

 

2 The amount under investigation was only £280.00 yet my accounts had available funds exceeding £39000.

 

3 There was no direct or documentary evidence of fraud, the investigation was initiated simply because my customer did not remember a transaction.

 

4 The bank could have granted me access to limited funds during the time the investigation took place but instead chose to leave me without access to any of my money which meant I could not buy fuel, materials, food or any other necessary business or personal purchases.

 

The bank could have resolved the issue on the first day by simply calling me to ask what the transaction in question was for, they could have then called my customer to explain my answer and my customer would have immediately remembered the work I had carried out, instead they carried out an investigation which left me without any money for over three days.

 

I have to ask myself what would happen if I forgot I'd bought some shopping at Tesco, would my bank freeze their accounts for 3 days?

 

What is the group consensus?

 

If you have got this far congratulations and thanks!!

 

[honeybee13]

Hello, welcome to CAG.

 

Could you tell us which bank you're dealing with please? It will help us move you to the right subforum. People will be along to advise later.

 

Best, HB

[Lindsey123]

Thanks for the reply.

The dispute is with NatWest but I was hoping to post in the general area as I thought banking practices would be standard but it seems I’ve posted it in the wrong area.

 

thanks agajn 

[honeybee13]

It's fine. Someone who deals with this more often than me will know.

 

HB

[dx100uk]

It is quite STD practice yes.

Just look at the Barclays forum 

 

Not really sure there is much you can do?

You say you had disruption for 3days?

If so you were lucky it normally takes 3 weeks 

 

Dx