Why should we all pay for those who’ve been scammed?

Total consumer fraud in the UK is around £1.2 billion. Last year HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest alone paid out more than £4 billion in Bankers bonuses. They can afford to do more

Also as a society we give very little support to people with lower level learning difficulties or early stage dementia. You are wanting to withdraw the tiny bit of support many do get I.e. help if conned.

Lol. This is really not why there's a gap between savings rates and interest rates.

Companies have transferred to us responsibility to do things staff used to do e.g. Internet banking. If you go into a branch and transfer money they do various checks and make it clear if you lie its your responsibility

So would you be happier if she lost the money then?

My FIL got scammed a couple of weeks ago @Raisinganiguana. He's a very sensible careful man, but the scammers happened to catch him on the day my DH was having treatment for cancer. FIL fell for the "my phone is broken Dad, and this bill has to be paid today" scam because he was already dreadfully worried about his son. Fortunately, the bank spotted it, rang FIL to verify and stopped the payment going through. FIL is still mentally beating himself up for falling for it. I think we should all remember that sometimes it's not just people being stupid.

In a way I agree with you. But once the need to reimburse actually hits the banks profits, perhaps they will step up and stop the fraud. It's their lack of concern, not bothering to chase down money, allowing criminals to open bank accounts, not stopping money going abroad, not working together internationally that letting it happen

The idea about reimbursement is mainly to make this kind of fraud the same in terms of a victim response as other types of fraud like if you have your card stolen or someone hacks into your bank account.

The scammers can be very sophisticated. Don’t pride yourself that you definitely couldn’t fall for one, that’s not true.

The banks have removed a lot of the safeguards that would previously have stopped some of this, without consulting consumers, for the benefit of their own balance sheets.

Closing branches and not having a dedicated bank manager pushes more and more people to bank online, even if they don’t have the skill or knowledge to do so safely. Customers increasingly don’t have a choice.

The banks profit hugely from reduced infrastructure costs. It’s right and proper that they bear the brunt of this. It’s them that benefits most from the current set up. They can’t have it both ways.

@countrygirl99 Some of the ideas being proposed are slowing down payments. 99% of fraud happens in the faster payments system which means banks have very little chance of recovering funds. The government will consult on giving banks the ability to hold suspicious payments for 48 hours to investigate. The other big area of focus is the banks/payment firms that allow fraudsters and money mules to open accounts to receive the proceeds of frauds.

Obviously a large scale international law enforcement operation to dismantle the organised crime gangs being the vast majority of frauds would be a good start too...

@Flower35214 Yeah, I totally agree with you. But I guess until you're in that kind of 'hot state' it's hard to know what it's like. I've known far too many fraud professionals who think they know it all and then get caught out themselves.

Every requirement on a bank to behave in a certain way affects the profitability of a particular group of customers and will impact things like interest rates. Of course these costs are being passed on to ordinary consumers rather than shareholders.

I completely agree with the original poster that if you choose to indulge in a fantasy whereby a young man half your age, that you have never set eyes on is completely bowled over by you; and then you decide to not heed the warnings of friends, family and then the obligatory warning from the bank- it shouldn’t be up to me indirectly to compensate you.

Yes, because any savings made would definitely be given back to customers, instead of creamed off for shareholders…..

You are being very naïve to think Banks will pass this on to their customers. They set rates based on the market and competition. A small cost like this will impact their profits

Scammers are always one step ahead though. They often have a plausible story and an answer to everything and they also have a way of picking out the vulnerable and playing on insecurities. Also, we've all seen the scam warnings so often that we probably don't pay attention any more.

I would worry more about the bonuses that banks pay out their bosses than the crumbs they give back to fraud victims…

People who fall for this are lonely and vulnerable. They are also victims of a crime. Drug addiction and gambling is sad but the users aren’t victims of a crime committed against them.

Im glad they get their money back. Why would I feel better with ‘serves you right’ to vulnerable lonely people who are clearly less fortunate than myself?

That's quite naive. Of course banks will want to protect their profit margins.

If they have to spend on fraud payouts and spend even more on fraud controls, education and awareness because some people keep falling for it * then there will be less money available to spend on other improvements for customers.

I get that some scammers are incredibly sophisticated, but there are also plenty of people doing exactly* what the banks have specifically warned them not to do.

@mynameiscalypso I get what you're saying and I do agree but I just can't get my head around the fact people will send these lump sums of money to people they've never even met/seen on a video call. It's just absurd to me.

So what do you suggest? How do banks stop people paying scammers without placing a huge burden on legitimate payments?

I know 2 people who fell victims to this kind of scam.

Both had learning difficulties. Both gave their disability payments over.

Yes they should get their money back.

I'm hard on this... I see this as natural selection.

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

(Sorry)

Oh and scammers manipulate you to ignore the warnings. That's why they're hugely ineffective. There's not really any good evidence that all the warnings actually change customer behaviour that much.