Actually

I agree with them.

Moves to slash the amount of compensation offered to bank customers who fall victim to fraud have been slammed as “outrageous” by consumer campaigners.

Finance regulators and the government are understood to be drawing up proposals to reduce the maximum compensation available to victims from £415,000 to £85,000 in a move that would protect bank profits.

Consumer experts have accused the watchdogs of putting the financial interests of banking giants, who stand accused of failing to protect customers against scammers, ahead of those of victims.

The vast majority of scams are pretty transparent. I accept that some people are vulnerable and need some sort of buffer to protect them, but this should be on a case by case basis, depending on the situation. However, the vast majority who fall for these schemes do so because they are foolish, greedy, gullible and simply do not heed the warning signs. Consequently, they fall for obvious scams. They should pay the price for this, not the banks and consequently, the banks’ other customers. So, yes, go ahead with this scheme. Maybe it will make people be a little more alert and take some personal responsibility for their actions.

Banking fraud where scammers pretend to be official bodies, such as banks, solicitors, the HRMC, or the police to con people into transferring cash to rogue accounts has soared in recent years.

It has indeed. Yet the banks and other relevant bodies (HMRC for example) repeatedly state that they will not call out of the blue and ask you to move money around. How many times do they have to say it before people take notice?

Likewise romance scams where people are repeatedly urged not to give money to someone you have never met, but people do.

In 2023, Britons lost £459.7mn to authorised push payment (APP) fraud, where someone was tricked into sending money from their bank account to a fraudster posing as a genuine payee.

That’s a lot of people too stupid to put down the phone – or better still, not answer it in the first place.

6 Comments

  1. I have 2 current accounts. Whenever I wish to make a largish payment to anyone from either of them (including to one of my savings accounts) I always get an ‘Are you sure this isn’t a scam’ type message. So I recheck the details before I hit send.

    Why people always want to blame others for their foolishness is beyond me. The people to blame are the scammers, and of of course themselves.

  2. I eagerly await the headline in the Daily fail “Nigerian Prince dies with 8 Billion in the bank that he couldn’t give away”.

    For obvious reasons, I won’t be holding my breath.

  3. My bank asks on every transaction are you sure this isn’t a scam. But I get so many messages from them they tend to merge together and I ignore them.

    I paid my Car Tax last week and when I got the SMS code from the bank it said. If somebody has asked for this code they are a criminal. Well they were right It was HMG but I still had no choice but to pay it or face potential death.

    We shouldn’t be compensation people who get scammed without checking. If they sent it to a Nigerian prince then No. If they get tricked out of it somehow then OK. But we can and should fix this. There are smart people out there who can devise a solution. Older people who get scammed should have protection as well. A family member or even an AI. Needs a bit of work here.

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