Which part of “banks do not phone up and ask you to transfer money to another account”, do people not understand?
How many times need it be said? Banks just don’t do this, just as Microsoft do not phone up to tell you that there is a problem with your PC. It just doesn’t happen. They do not do this, so why do people still fall for it?
She said: “Banks or police will not ask you to transfer or handover sums of money and you should never give out details of bank accounts, PINs or personal information. If you receive contact from an unknown caller stop and think for a moment.
“Be suspicious particularly if they are telling you something is wrong or that you need to send or handover money. If you suspect you may be the victim of a bogus call hang up and leave the phone down for at least ten minutes or use another phone before contacting anyone else.
“Don’t be afraid to hang up on unknown callers. Genuine callers will understand if you want to call them back later, after checking existing paperwork to confirm numbers, to check their identity.”
There is nothing new in this, yet still people handover money and then cry about it afterwards. In this case, the business needs to look closely at its internal security given that one employee was able to hand over a million quid to scammers.
We get a fair few of these calls, but the Truecall stops them dead.
There is a disturbing trend for banks etc. to regard a mobile phone as authentication that they are dealing with the right customer, don’t mobiles ever get lost/stolen?
The banks don’t help by allowing scammers to open and close accounts easily, how does that happen? A couple of years ago I found it nearly impossible to open a new current account, (switch it yes), yet I hear of some individuals that run TEN that have a circle of standing orders to push £500/£1000 per month to satisfy minimum ‘income’ requirements.
Beats me why banks love ‘rate tarts’. Do they give themselves bonuses for ‘new’ customers whilst ignoring those who leave?
When my bank suggested I set up a pair of zero-sum accounts to reap the perks of moving cash from one to the other, I asked what was in it for them. “Even if it’s the same money, it all shows up as economic activity, and the more activity the branch generates, the better the bank’s sales figures” (and, presumably, the higher the bonuses paid to staff).
As for ignoring those who leave, if you’ll forgive a spot of recycling from a previous rant, this is what happened when I told the cashier I was thinking of taking my account elsewhere:
The response to this was a blank stare for several seconds, a vague, “Oh. Alright then,” and, after another pause, a brightly artificial, “And is there anything else I can help you with at all today?”
I’m sure this cashier must have passed some kind of training in customer service but, faced with a real live dissatisfied account holder, her instructions simply did not equip her to react. Instead, she clearly dismissed the problem from whatever she was using for a mind and carried on according to her programming.
‘…why do people still fall for it?’
I’d guess a high proportion of them are of an age to have opened their accounts long before telephone or internet banking.
It makes my blood boil that my elderly relatives – some well into their eighties – are being increasingly hounded by their respective banks to go online and use the internet or phone instead of visiting the branch. While still in possession of an impressive number of marbles, they are ill-at-ease with modern banking methods and, despite a degree of natural caution, might well err on the side of trusting the plausible caller.