Money stolen from my account - what are my rights?!

[whufc]

Hi,

I need some advice on a current issue I am having with my bank. About 2 and a half months ago i had a relatively large sum of money stolen from my account (over £5,000 was taken).

The bank have, so far, been more than useless in getting my money back and the only information I have been given is that the money was transferred to an account in another country, and it was done via my online banking - which means someone must have hacked my online profile. They have told me that they have 90 days to investigate the case before they even think about returning my money.

I have, somehow, managed to remain calm for the past 2 and a half months - just ringing them a couple of times a week to get an update and to make sure they havent forgotten about me. About a month ago (so a month and a half after the funds were stolen) I rang up and was told that they hadnt even began looking at the case yet! Anyway, I digress.

Last week when I called them they told me that they had managed to trace £1,000 of the funds and that these would be returned to my account in the next 3-4 weeks! I asked for confirmation of this in writing and they told me they would send a letter which I will receive in the next 21 days. (I'm now suspecting the letter will say I can have that £1,000 back within 3-4 weeks of the date of the letter!) They cannot, however, confirm or deny when I will get the remainder of my money back, or if I will get it back at all.

The reason I need advice is because the banks "90 day period" to investigate is up in just a couple of weeks time, and I need to know what my rights are as a customer because I suspect that they are going to try all avenues to get out of giving me my money back - i feel like i've been fobbed off so far and i dont see why that would change.

Up to this point they have never contacted me (not even when the money was stolen, I actually had to ring them to see why my online banking was telling me my account had been frozen) - I have always had to ring them, even when I have been promised a call back I have still not heard anything. Whenever I have spoken to them I have just been told "its being investigated". I have asked them why I wasnt contacted when an unusual transaction was taking place on my account - for which they had no answer.

Am I being taken for a mug here? This happened to one of my colleagues (with a different bank) and they had all of their money back within 3 days!

Any advice would be much appreciated because I want my money back.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Money stolen from my account - what are my rights?!

Did you report the incident to the police and get a crime reference number? I'll see if I can get someone who had a similar experience a few years ago, to post up here, he did manage to get his money back.

[Mr $quanda£ot]

Re: Money stolen from my account - what are my rights?!

Could you please specify your case a bit?

You are saying that they (your bank) managed to trace £1,000. How many transactions were there in total? How quickly did you report the incident? I appreciate that you are not going to log onto your online account every day, but how quickly did you find out that money had gone missing from your account after the fraudulent transaction?

Your bank should have advised you to report the incident to the police.

I can only talk about Santander as I have had similar incidents on three occasions with them. First occurred in 1998 when it was still Abbey National, involving several smallish (up to £50) transactions. On that occasion they sorted it out quickly, in a matter of days. In 2006 I had another fraudulent transaction. I reported it to Santander as soon as I realised the incident. At that time, Santander tried to argue that the transaction 'appeared to be valid' even when my surname had been misspelt. I said that it certainly wasn't and they asked me to report the incident to the police. It took a bit longer to get the money back but I did.

Finally, in 2007 I had several large fraudulent transactions. I had sold my flat a few weeks earlier and had a relatively high balance on my current account. The amount missing must have been close to your £5k in total. Dealing with Santander was much harder. To cut a long story short, I eventually (within a few weeks) got my money back. I had to get a new current account number as a result. I stayed with Santander though I was so pissed off that I opened another current account, with intention to transfer all my finances to Alliance & Leicester. Somehow I never quite did it and in the following year A&L were taken over by Santander anyway!

I'm not sure what your legal position is. I assume that if you have reported the incident to the police (the earlier the better) you will be in a much better position.

Failing to get your money back you always have an option to make a formal complaint. Your bank will then have eight weeks to respond. If no satisfactory solution is reached i.e. getting all your money back you will then have an option to refer your case to the FOS. A bit of warning here, from my own experience the FOS are waste of time and space and tend to be on banks' side from the outset.

Writing to the CEO works sometimes. He/she won't be dealing with your case personally but it is often referred to the executive office who tend to take you a little bit more seriously.

Bluebottle might be able to advise you on how the police deal with similar incidents.

[whufc]

Re: Money stolen from my account - what are my rights?!

Hi Both,

Thanks for your replies.

Firstly, if it is any help then the bank in question is Halifax.

The incident wasnt reported to the police. In hindsight it sounds ridiculous, but I didnt think the police would get involved with this sort of thing because the bank would investigate it. Would it be too late to now report it to the police as it happened 2 and a half months ago?

The bank didnt advise me to report it to the police - they just said that they would investigate it.

To clarify, I wasnt aware that any money had been stolen from my account. I tried to log in to my online banking and it wouldnt let me in because my "account had been frozen". I then called the bank to see why my account had been frozen and they told me it was because of "suspicious activity" on my account, they then proceeded to tell me that over £5,000 had been transferred to an account in a different country. I asked why i hadnt been contacted when the transaction was made to check that it was actually me and they didnt have an answer.

I believe that the above happened 2 days after the transaction was made.

The bank asked me to prove that I was not in Poland (the country the money was transferred to) at the time the transaction was made. Luckily I had a doctors appointment that week and the bank actually contacted my doctors surgery to confirm that I had attended that appointment.

Until last week I heard nothing from the bank, i have always had to ring them and have only been told its still under investigation. Last week they said they had traced £1,000 of the funds which had been spent online and that i will have this returned to me in the next 3-4 weeks.

It doesnt really make any sense to me, if they traced £1,000 which was spent online then surely they can see which account it came from and they can trace the rest of it?

I've never been worried about not getting my money back because I know I have done nothing wrong and surely they would have to PROVE that i have been negligent with my account details in order for them not to pay it back?

They've already confirmed to me that they are satisfied it was stolen so why can't they return my money and then try to trace it back for themselves? Surely they have insurance for these kind of things?

They may surprise me and, at the end of the 90 days they claim to have, return all of the money to me. This does not seem likely to me though and I would like to know my rights as a customer in this situation so that I know where I stand.