Another irony of electronic banking

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The other day I attempted to make an online payment from my bank account to my partner. In order to authorise the payment I had to first get past a screen filled with warnings about fraudsters. There was a list of questions such as ‘Did anyone make you feel under pressure to make this payment?’ ‘Did you receive these account details in an email or text message?’ ‘Are you aware that fraudsters may call and impersonate bank officials?’ Once past that, I clicked to confirm payment and then got a message saying the payment was delayed. The next morning I got a call from the bank, to check that the payment I had made online was genuinely me. The irony was that although I was almost certain that this call was legitimate and that it was part of an effort to save people from falling victim to scams, I still didn’t feel like I wanted to trust the caller. They knew my name and that I had attempted to make a payment the night before - but then I have read so many scam stories that you don’t know what these people may be able to find out. When the man asked me to ‘confirm’ my name and date of birth I declined to answer any more and said I would go to the bank in person when I went to town next day (thankfully there is still a branch near enough to get to). So far I don’t think the scammers have infiltrated the system so well that they can get an actual person behind the counter of an actual bank building. So the next day I went to my local bank branch. When I finally jumped through the hoops required to see a real member of staff (luckily I had a book to read while I waited) I explained the problem and she looked up my account and found a note stating that since I had declined to respond to the bank caller my online access had been blocked! Luckily I hadn’t needed to carry out any more transactions so I didn’t even realise this. She said that a call would need to be made to the fraud team to unblock the account. She called another member of staff over and asked if she could help - she just said ‘No!’ She then had to radio for another member of staff on a walkie-talkie, and she took me to a little side office where she called the fraud team and then sat there holding the ‘phone for quite a long time - it must have been 15 to 20 minutes - while I sat there reading my book. It was quite strange because every now and then we would hear snatches of conversation from the other end of the phone line which were nothing to do with us… Anyway eventually someone came on the line to talk to us. The staff member confirmed that I was there in person in the branch, that my identity had been confirmed by two methods, and could they please unblock my account if that was OK with them. Of course I wanted it unblocked whether it was OK with them or not! The fraud team person then asked to speak to me, at which point she said before unblocking the account she would need to ask me a few questions. She then proceeded to read out the same questions as are on the website ‘Did anyone make you feel under pressure to make this payment?’ ‘Did you receive these account details in an email or text message?’ ‘Are you aware that fraudsters may call and impersonate bank officials?’ etc. etc. I explained that indeed I was perfectly aware of this and that the fact that I did know that fraudsters may call and impersonate bank officials was the reason I declined to answer the questions posed by the person who called me claiming to be a bank official, and that as a result I was now spending half my day in the bank trying to rectify this! She listened politely but nevertheless still proceeded to subject me to the rest of the list before doing anything useful. Thankfully eventually it was sorted, for the time being. It is making me nervous of putting my money in the bank though in case I can’t get it out again! I do keep a stash of cash in the house for emergencies just in case some sort of hack or electronic failure locks up all bank accounts or inactivates their machines. Of course the question now is, how do the banks protect their customers from scammers if those customers think that anyone who calls them asking for information related to their bank account is a scammer? I asked the fraud team person this; she said there was nothing the bank staff could do to confirm they are genuine. So I suspect this type of scenario is going to be repeated. Do you trust a stranger on the telephone? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2021.