RBS Froze my bank account with no notice

[Greg Dunn]

Hi - I have had a current account with the RBS for some years. It has a substantial balance in it at the moment although I will be reducing that fairly soon!

 

Last week I was buying some items on EBay using PayPal and could not get my registered RBS debit card to work. Went to the RBS Digitlal Banking site to find my account was not even listed! Panic! Phoned RBS - at this point it was nearly 11 p.m. in the evening. They referred me to their fraud prevension deparment. For some reason a couple of totally innocent transactions on EBay and a cash withdrawl had tripped their anti-fraud software and frozen my account. I was furious and demanded to know why I was not informed first? Then it seems they phoned my old [now inacctive] phone number despite having up to date information! Tha account was then unblocked but I suffered a panic attack as a result. The stress was bad as I have had a recent heart attack. I did not get to sleep for some hours.

 

Since this I have visited the bank and received the usual appologies "One out of five account blockings are inappropriate like mine." However surely the bank is out of order to have gone ahead with blocking my account without contacting me first? Also, they admitted an error, that my account was not shown at all on their digital banking site.

 

Saying "sorry" is simply not good enough. Has anybody got advice for any action I could take? I intend to remove the majority of the funds from the account shortly in any case. I have asked for them to explain why innocent transactions were seen as being suspect but, of course, no comment.

 

Thanks

 

Greg

[IdaInFife]

to be honest , i would rather them freeze my account if they felt there were 'suspicious' activity.

 

Normally they do contact you within the hour or try anyway but as you say they were using an old number.

 

the only action you could take is what you have said by using your feet and going elsewhere if you do not like there security policy

[buzby]

Afraid I'm with Ida too - eBay is a known harbinger of fraud, so their ability to trap this and lessen their exposure to fraud is a good thing. As for the wrong phone number, this is a side issue and is probably rectified now?

 

A bank's ability to contact you will depend on many factors, and I doubt RBS would be able to phone me with an issue as if the called with heir number withheld, they'd not get through as I have ACR on my line to prevent scams and marketing calls.

 

Neither can you hold them FTP account for aggravating a panic attack. If you found your account having a zero balance, the effect might have been considerably worse!

[citizenB]

Have to agree with Ida and Buzby, better to have the account frozen than emptied.

 

You could always make a general complaint to Head Office in respect of them not having their records updated with new telephone number as you had advised them of this.