I thought I'd do a stand-in for Zippy this week. ;-)
Sometime last week, I transferred a not-insignificant amount of money to No.1 son's bank account (same bank as mine). (It's all to do with IHT ;-) )
All went well until he subsequently went shopping at Tesco, and had his card refused. No notice, despite the bank having his mobile number, though he said he realised what had happened, as a friend had recently had his account locked under fairly similar circumstances.
Luckily, he had some cash (enough to pay for his shopping) on him, and was later able to get his account unlocked.
It still seems odd practice to me to lock an account in those circumstances; if the bank are concerned about the incoming amount, why not just divert it to a holding account and notify the "intended" recipient? The transfer was from an account patently with the same surname.
And...
On Sunday, whilst I was logged in online to the joint account, SWMBO asked me to do a transfer into her own account. She likes to have a bit of "private" money so she can dispose of it on presents for me without my knowing. "£1000?" I asked, hopefully. "£100 will be enough", so I dutifully transferred it.
We both have online banking - I can see the joint account and the (shared) credit card account (which is in my name), she can see the joint account and her own current account. Accordingly, on Monday she tried to log in to her account to check the transfer had happened.
Online banking locked! (I could still login to mine, and see my accounts, one of which, as above, is shared between the two logins). Again, no notification by 'phone, the numbers for which are registered for fraud calls and one-time passcodes.
It took her best part of an hour and three transfers on the phone (to the fraud department) to get it all unlocked. No-one would be more forthcoming about the reason other than "there's currently a lot of fraud about")
WTF! This was a £100 transfer between accounts linked under the same person (give them any one of the account numbers when you call and they can see all the linked ones).
I can't say I'm particularly happy, but I'd be incandescent if I'd only had one bank account, they locked it and didn't inform me, I had no cash, and I was paying for 'phone calls to get it sorted.
Not very good!
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Banking new
Banking new