RBS have made me a thief.

[Charterman]

Yesterday was my pay day and on that day I pay my bills and do my shopping. I paid one bill for £60 via the online bank OK. I also bought a new iron from Amazon and was very surprised for the payment not to go through. I rang the bank to ask why and they said they could see no problem and all was well.

Later that day I went to Aldi and did my usual weekly shop and I left the shop paying with my card with no problem. Only later I went to Sainsbury's for something else and was very surprised to be called back to the self service tills to be told that the card hadn't gone through. I re-entered the details and it refused it again. Fortunately I had another card and left the shop feeling very embarrassed and humiliated.

When I got in I spoke to the bank again, this time to a woman who wasn't a major loss to toilet cleaning and I was told that they had blocked my card due to fraudulent activity. News to me. Another lying employee told me they wrote to me regarding this matter yet couldn't provide with me anything in the letter and I haven't had it.

It was at this point when we went through the transactions of what had been paid and what hadn't that I discovered I had walked out of Aldi without paying. I checked my receipt and it doesn't have an authorisation code. Aldi have since sent the Police to my address for alleged shoplifting. The funny thing is a payment of £25 was taken out at the post office with no problem. There is no continuity to what has been paid and what has been refused.

My suspicious mind thinks this is deliberate because I have complained about them selling my account to Santander without my permission. I am now in the position of having no access to money this weekend when I need it. A possible shoplifting and fraud charge and a bank that not only are they totally disinterested, don't know anything, can't do anything and actually think it is funny ( yes, the girl in the fraud department started giggling ) I am hopping mad.

I'm sorry to be so long winded on here but I need to know what is the best cause of action for me to take next. How dare a bank deny me access to my own money and I would have thought a phone call would have been more appropriate than a letter in this situation. Can I sue the pants of them for branding me a thief and leaving me with no money please?

Thank you in advance.

[teaboy2]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

You need to make a formal account in dispute letter detailing everything you have said here an threaten to sue them for damages, You may even want to consider going to the papers.

What did the police say when you explain everything? are they taking action against you or accepted your explanation as an honest attempt to pay that was refused by the bank for no apparent reason without your knowledge?

[IanM]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

In relation to the alleged shoplifting at Aldi, i would ask them why their member of staff on the till allowed you to leave the shop believing you had paid for your goods, even giving you a receipt, without stopping you there and then.
If your card was refused etc, how did Aldi know where to send the police?
If they knew who you were to be able to direct the police to your home then why could they have not contacted you privately to discuss the situation with you?

Personally, i would write to Aldi head office and make a complaint about the conduct of their store manager and the actions he took against you for what was an error on the part of the bank and the shop staff. Tell them you would never have left the store without paying for your goods if the staff had told you your card had rejected the payment. Explain your embarrassment at having the police turning up on your doorstep accusing you of shoplifting and offer to pay the outstanding bill(unless you have already paid it) then tell them you will not be visiting their store again and you will be advising all your friends and family not to use their store again.

You can be quite sure they will want to apologize and offer compensation for your distress.(probably vouchers to use in their store, lol)

[IanM]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Oh yes, move your account to another bank, don't know which though because they are all as bad as each other!

[leclerc]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Charterman, I think IanM has brought up a very good point. How did Aldi know where you live? Why did they allow you to leave the store without paying? At the moment the defence to the shop lifting charge is that the assistant gave you the receipt and as far as you were concerned, you had paid for the goods.
Second point, did RBS have your up to date contact details? Did they run through the transactions that they thought were fraudulent? If they did and confirmed that they were not then they could have removed the block on the card so that it could be used.
I think you can complain about the manner that you were being dealt with but I think clarification is required prior to jumping down the throat of a bank. Once you've clarified some points above then the picture may well be clearer.

[Charterman]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Thank you for all the replies. I have calmed down somewhat by now but are still wanting answers.

I haven't been back to Aldi since the incidence because they are not local and I have to drive there. However I have rung their head office but it was closed due to this bank holiday.

It is confusing how Aldi sent the Police to my home. I guess the bank gave them my address. It is also very strange why the card payment not going through wasn't picked up by Aldi. I didn't check the 2 receipts you get when you pay by card, only the one with the shopping items on to check prices etc. I was stood in the store a good 5 minutes packing away my shopping into my bags so there was plenty of time to say to me that there was a problem. I only read the other receipt when the police turned up and saw that it hadn't been authorised. It was lucky I had kept both parts but they could see that I had entered my pin which had been verified etc and that I was under the impression that I had paid. They said it was down to me, the bank and Aldi.

I shall be emailing Hester the CEO of RBS on Tuesday outlining my complaint and asking him what he is going to do to put the matter right. The very least he can do in my eyes is pay off Aldi. He can then discuss with me compensation for humiliating, embarrassing and turning me into a shoplifter. I also want a copy of the letter that they alleged was sent, why they didn't email or phone me about their concerns about fraud and who authorised it. This excludes the fact that my weekend has been ruined as I have no access to money. Can anyone suggest a suitable figure to ask for this awful charade please?

This brings me to the other part of this equation that is confusing: nobody at the bank can explain if my card is blocked or not or why some items were allowed to go through and others stopped. I t just a mess.

[teaboy2]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Charterman, I think IanM has brought up a very good point. How did Aldi know where you live?

Registered card address, which will show on their merchant account that aldi have with their card processing provider, is most likely how they knew the address. As for not stopping the OP for failed payment, it could be that the payment was simply deferred pending release authorisation by Aldi. When i take card payments on my company website i have to manually release all payments, which is great for website as it helps weed out the fraudulent transactions, but not so great for a highstreet shop/supermarket that allow goods to be taken once payment was made.

But if by what Charterman says above the second receipt showed as not authorised, then surely their should have been a something in place to alert the OP to this, such as an alarm on the self check out screen or instead of simply printing out the receipt the software should be changed to call the assistant prior to completing the payment process.

[bluebottle]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Firstly, Charterman, you are not a shoplifter. A shoplifter deliberately sets out to take merchandise from a shop without any intention of paying from the outset. In your case, the police have, quite correctly, realised what has happened and acted accordingly, that is, left you to sort things out with Aldi and RBS. How best to deal with this, as I am sure LB members who have experience of the banking industry and my experience, as a former police officer, will confirm, there is a very small number of people, in the banking industry, who think it is clever to do this sort of thing without stopping to think of the consequences.

There is a possibility that what some muppet at your bank has done amounts to Fraud by Abuse of Position, contrary to Section 4, Fraud Act 2006. The offence is constructed as follows -

A person is in breach of this section if he -

(a) occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not act against, the financial interests of another person,
(b) dishonestly abuses that position, and
(c) intends, by means of the abuse of that position -

(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to the risk of loss.

This needs to be pointed out to Mr Hester and his vicarious liability as a manager. You might also wish to mention Section 12, Fraud Act 2006, which enables the management of companies and the companies themselves to be held accountable for offences of fraud. Also, have the media up your sleeve as a back-up weapon. Adverse publicity for a large company, like a bank or a retailer, can be very damaging to their reputation and business.

I'm attaching a copy of the Fraud Act 2006 to this post. Print off the sections I have mentioned in this post and enclose with any letter to Mr Hester.

[Charterman]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Thank you Bluebottle for posting the above. The Fraud Act is making very interesting information and I shall be using it against that rotten institution called RBS.

[bluebottle]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Thank you Bluebottle for posting the above. The Fraud Act is making very interesting information and I shall be using it against that rotten institution called RBS.

Just remember that the Fraud Act 2006 is best used against individual employees and managers. Trying to mount a criminal prosecution against the company of a bank is notoriously difficult. What banks fear most is their cheating and lying coming out into the public arena. Having an employee hauled before a court for something bent does the bank's reputation a lot of damage, despite their claims of such instances being isolated. When I was a CID officer, Lloyds TSB came up on our radar a lot, closely followed by NatWest. Barclays and Midland (now HSBC) rarely came to our attention. I think that says a lot about Lloyds TSB and NatWest.

If there are any specific instances you want guidance on with regard to the Fraud Act 2006, either post on this thread or send me a PM.

[leclerc]

Re: RBS have made me a thief.

Does the bank have your up to date contact details? They would not have emailed you btw(You will be amazed at the number of so called emails from banks telling you of fraudulent activity and all of them are phishing scams). Telephone is definitely one method but if there was a suspicion then the card would be blocked and a letter sent out to you. Normally this would come to light by a shop declining the transaction and the person calling up/going into a branch. You are the first case I have known where the card was blocked and the shop allowed you to take goods when the card was declined. It can come about from, for example, intelligence that a certain shop/petrol station or retail outlet has been known or is known for a number of fraudulent transactions and so it is done with the idea of preventing fraud. Worth asking the question to Aldi as to why they allowed you to leave the shop without even telling you that you're card was declined because at least then you would have resolved the issue straight away. Transaction made at different stores would be allowed through if they were not unusual or were direct debits that were usual for the account.

If your contact details are up to date with the bank then the bank is only imho partially responsible in terms of blocking the card.