Fraud victims ‘left in the lurch’ by banks who fail to offer proper support, says Which?

Customers waiting hours on hold after reporting scams, consumer group finds

Significant number of scam victims ‘slipping through the cracks’ (PA Archive)

High street banks are leaving fraud victims “in the lurch” by failing to provide adequate help and allowing them to be exposed to future scams, according to a report.

Which? said that a significant number of victims were “slipping through the cracks”.

A poll by the consumer group found that one in seven victims who reported fraud waited for more than half an hour to speak to someone. One customer racked up a £50 phone bill after seven hours on hold.

While eight in 10 of those polled were happy with how their bank dealt with their complaint, that potentially leaves thousands of customers who were not happy.

Official figures indicate that for the year ending March 2021 there were 4.6 million fraud offences.

Almost a third of victims said their bank did not offer advice or resources to help better protect themselves in the future.

Mark Wheeler, 62 from Richmond, southwest London, received a phone call from a scam artist posing as a Lloyds fraud investigator in May 2019.

The caller listed suspicious transactions and asked if he still had his bank cards on him. When Mr Wheeler realised that his wallet had been stolen from his jacket, he was then persuaded to enter his card pins into his smartphone on the phone.

The caller said this was to authorise reimbursement of fraudulent purchases. Shortly afterwards, thieves had made large withdrawals, stealing over £9,000 in total.

Mr Wheeler said: “My account was suspended pending investigation, which I understood, but Lloyds refused to pay pre-existing standard orders and direct debits, causing me to be threatened with penalty charges.

"Despite the fact I had been the victim of a telephone scam, Lloyds initially told me that it would contact me by phone to advise me of the outcome of its investigation. It did not seem to appreciate the irony.”

Many banks have signed up to a voluntary code under which they have pledged to refund customers who are not at fault. Which? is calling for the code to be replaced with a mandatory scheme.

TSB, which has its own fraud refund guarantee, has also called for a mandatory refund scheme in a consultation response to the Payment Systems Regulator.

Jenny Ross, Which? Money editor, said: "When banks fail to offer proper support, it can make a nightmare situation even worse, and an absence of information from firms about how people can protect themselves could even lead to ruthless scammers striking for a second time."