My HSBC bank account has over 200 fraudulent transactions to XBox overnight

[fuzzybrain]

Today has not been fun! I spent a lot of it on the phone to HSBC as I discovered my debit card has been used fraudulently. Upon checking our bank accounts today I discovered that our balance was showing as expected our available balance was zero, which was not what I expected!

I called HSBC who informed me the difference between my balance and available balance was due to the large amount of pending transactions. There were over 200 transactions that totalled almost £5000 had been made to Xbox using my debit card. All had been made within th past 12 hours.

Although I was still in possession of my debit card these transactions were not made by me. HSBC online banking team initially tried to tell me these transactions could not be considered as fraudulent activity because I still had my card in my possession. After I stopped laughing at their stupidity I told the customer service agent they were mistaken and to transfer me to the fraud team. Fortunately the fraud team were very helpful and it was quickly established these transactions were most likely fraudulent. I was given a summary of events

First transaction was for £0.59
No further activity for a couple of hours
Another transaction for £0.59 was made
After this there were continual transactions which increased in amount
Activity ceased when the transactions were declined due to insufficient amounts.

HSBC fraud team have confirmed this will be investigated as fraudulent activity. They have cancelled my card and removing all 200+ transactions from our bank account which will release the money ring held for pending transactions so our available balance will return what it shoud be. HSBC said this will take them a couple of hours to complete due to amount of transactions they will need to process.

I have no idea how my card details were misused, HSBC said they may never find out how this happened or who was responsible. They didn’t say if any other customers were reporting fraudulent activity on their accounts.

Given the amount/pattern of the transactions I would have thought/hoped that HSBC would have fraud alerts in place to pick upon this kind of activity but obviously not.......

Should HSBC have alerts in place to pick up this activity as soon as it happened?
Has anybody else experienced this?

[2222]

"Given the amount/pattern of the transactions I would have thought/hoped that HSBC would have fraud alerts in place to pick upon this kind of activity but obviously not.......

Should HSBC have alerts in place to pick up this activity as soon as it happened?"

I commiserate. It's HSBC's problem now, not yours, but of course they should have flagged this up pretty quickly. I suppose their systems are a constant balancing act between upsetting customers who are in the middle of playing games on their Xbox and letting fraudulent stuff through, and they clearly got it wrong on this occasion.

My bank decided to block my cards during my Black Friday shopping spree, which I found quite annoying.

[fuzzybrain]

If there had been a small amount of transactions I could understand why it didn’t trigger HSBC’s fraud alerts. When an account has over 200 transactions to the same recipient within a very short period of time it would set set a fraud alert. Surely this is exactly the kind of activity the fraud alerts should be monitoring for?

The person I spoke with on the fraud team was surprised that an alert hadn’t been triggered. I’m guessing he wasn’t very happy about the amount of transactions there were, as he was the one who had to process and remove them all from our account.

[2222]

There's clearly an issue with the bank's systems, I agree.

[fuzzybrain]

I’m so angry at HSBC’s utter incompetence

Yet again my bank account has been subjected to fraudulent activity. 23 fraudulent transactions for £11.99 have been debited from my account. These transactions were made on 21 January 2019. A day AFTER my bank card was cancelled by HSBC’s fraud team.

During my calls to HSBC today I have been repeatedly lied to and given incorrect information. It started with being told that I did not have any transactions to Xbox on my account! I had to be very insistent and then they finally agreed they could see the transactions but then the lies started again! I was told:

They were pending transactions and were not going to leave my account so I didn’t need worry about them! Nope, they clearing showing on my online account statement as cleared transactions so look again

These are refunded trasactions. Nope, try again, there is a minus sign in front of each transaction, therefore they are debit transactions.

I didn’t have the patience to debate their stupidity with them any further so asked to be transferred to somebody who knew what they were doing. At first I thought i was making progress as the fraud officer stated they could see the 23 transactions on my account and they had been debited from my account. Sadly his next sentance shattered any hope of honesty or intelligence from HSBC fraud team! He informed me that as the transactions were made by my debit card on 21 January 2019 they were not considered fraudulent and I was responsible for the transactions.

I really needed a tranquilliser or sedative at this point. I tried to remain calm and explain he was very very much mistaken and why (I also learnt he certainly did not understand sarcasm!). Upon accepting that it was impossible for me to make any transactions with my bank card after Sunday 20 January because the fraud team had cancelled my debit card and a new card had not yet been sent to me the lies and backtracking began again! He claimed the 23 transactions were part of the original fraudulent transactions made on 20 January 2019.

This was a complete lie as all of the fraudulent transactions made on 20 January 2019 were pending transactions so had never actually appeared on my account and they were cleared from my pending transactions in full. I had carefully checked all the transactions had been removed from my pending balance and the money released. The difference between my available account and actual balance was as I expected just under £72 which covered the transactions I had made with my card on Friday and Saturday (debits of £64.50 and £29.99 and a credit of £22.99) so certainly not enough to cover 23 transactions of £11.99 (£275.77).

I’ had enough of trying to explain myself at this point and made a formal complaint. The complaint manager that I spoke to looked at my account and saw the fraud team had failed to cancel my bank card until today and the additional fraudulent activity had taken place on Monday 21 January, after the card was supposed to have been cancelled. He was very apologetic and accepted that HSBC needed to look into this matter further. He has refunded the amount taken from our account and assured me that the card is definitely blocked and a new card is being sent to me.

I have made a formal complaint regarding HSBC’s conduct and negligence, especially regarding their failure to instigate the correct fraud procedures which led to my account being subjected to fraudulent activity for a second. I have been assured that a full investigation will take place and I will be kept updated and informed of the outcome. A customer service manager will contact me to discuss my complaint and what outcome I wish to achieve.

I have spent several hours on the phone to HSBC on 2 different days getting this mess sorted out and my account back to normal. To find that the second instance of fraud took place because they failed to cancel my card until today leaves me completely speechless (which is not a easy thing to achieve!)

What is a reasonable outcome to expect from my complaint in terms of explanation, apologies and action? It is reasonable to expect HSBC to compensate me for the disturbance and upset this has caused, especially as HSBC’s incompetence enabled the second occurrence of fraudulent activity on my account.

I am so angry and feel incredibly let down by HSBC’s failure to protect my account from fraudulent activity. Is the anything else I can do to ensure HSBC understands how upset I am about how they have failed to take the appropriate action to keep my account safe. If so what would you recommend I do?

[fuzzybrain]

Any advice regarding my complaint to HSBC please

[2222]

I'm betting you'll get a 3 page reply to your complaint and a cheque for £75.