Bank worker has just lectured me on my spending

Well, sure, but it's quite important that the woman at the bank should be reminded that she really ought not to tell people they might be suspected of money-laundering. If that was what she said.

Not huge amounts but unusual purchases in 'their' opinion!
They can literally control your spending if they want to. There are thousands of examples of people having transactions stopped or their accounts frozen for no legitimate reason

This is a complete tangent - but you must be a professional musician. Have you read 'An Equal Music' by Vikram Seth? I'm not a musician but your post reminded me of it.

£1200 is hardly a fortune. Are you sure he/she was actually telling you off or just pointing out or explaing why your card had been declined, which in itself is good because i imagine online spending in one day with lots of shops probably would raise a red flag that the card is being misused.

Money laundering by moving some money out of savings and going online shopping! 🤣

DH has to notify our bank if he has a work trip abroad and will be using his card abroad. On one occasion they blocked his card because he had used his card in a toy shop, buying gifts to take home to our kids.

Apparently, buying gifts for children is an abnormal thing for a father to do whilst on a week-long business trip.

But cashless are not most of us do our stuff Online

I’m just out of interest. What kind of amount did they block?

I think sometimes they just get overzealous with protecting people and I don’t like this new over 60s rule. Like most of us will still be working and yet the bank decides that we’re not bright enough to decide how we spend our money.

And this is exactly why we must do everything possible to ensure we dont become a cashless society!!!
Ive had my banks block 3 purchases in the past 2 years and freeze all my accounts. It took nearly two days of being sat in a branch on the phone to their head office with a screaming 2mth old baby in tow for them to sort it out at one point!
I absolutely despise how they can 'control' your spending! Its my fucking money!!!!

What were the actual words they used? I think there's a difference between commenting that the spending is unusual or beyond typical spending (for you, which it is) and explaining that that has flagged an alert, and outright saying you are being irresponsible spending your money and shouldn't be.

I don't think that it being flagged for potential fraud is necessarily unusual, if it's not normal for you to spend on goods such as these and you suddenly were. That's exactly the kind of thing that might indicate someone else had acquired your card or card details.

That's happened to us. The dealership said it happens when you buy a car outright rather than on a lease.

I think you came across a really terrible member of staff

You’re saying you also booked a weekend away

Let’s say that was five or £600

Then you could easily spend the rest.

I don’t get it really - flagging up and unusual pattern is fine, I understand the block

But telling you you’re spending irresponsibly is really something else!

i’ve got some really old experiences of this, two times the bank said to me “ you spent so much money” but my mother was visiting so it was concert tickets and meals out and stuff like that. It wasn’t a lot of money and it was over about a week I think.

Quite

I think people are missing the nuance, the woman clearly didn’t think the op was money laundering, she was saying it could look like that and be a red flag.

but it’s bizzare, for 1200, however often people base it on their own experience and this may have seemed like a huge amount to the woman, due to her own earnings.

Oh I had this! I sold my car as part exchange at a dealership. To pay for the rest of the brand new car 32k, I had taken out a car loan from my bank. But guess what? The payment was declined and I had to talk to 3 different people at length, all asking ridiculous questions like "why do you want to buy this make and model? Is this the price you'd expect to pay? What does the gear lever look like? What was your old car's milage?" Why did they try to stop me from spending the loan they'd given be a week before, explicitly for this purpose? When I said I was buying It because of the colour I was told that was a silly reason. It was excruciatingly stressful as the dealer was embarrassed and drumming his fingers , my children were also mortified, and I'd already surrendered my old car and was due to go on a driving holiday the next day! I have given up alcohol, and this has been the closest I have come to "needing" a drink in the old way, when I got home!

There’s so much to be said for cash sometimes!

I understand they have an obligation to do this, and they’re trying to stop money laundering and VAT avoidance, but it’s utterly piss-boiling to be given the third degree and treated like a criminal when you simply want access to your hard-earned, already fully taxed money.

I’m living temporarily in a country where no such restrictions apply. It’s a cash economy and they’ll literally hand over wads of it in a swag bag, no questions asked, if you have it in your account. It’s so unusual now to be allowed to spend your own money without a whiff of suspicion that I feel like I’m robbing the bank or somehow getting away with something every time I make a larger-than-usual withdrawal!

Except OP doesn't care about that, does she?

In which case if she did mention it, that is the complaint you make. As well as "she lectured me about how I was spending my money in a way I found condescending and rude", obviously.

This makes no sense. I used to work in banking and (unless the rules have changed a LOT) id she suspected you of money laundering she should have mentioned it to you! Its called "tipping off" and is a crime in its own right!!

The issue isn't that they are doing money laundering checks, it's that the person phoning was rude and judgmental, trying to tell OP not to spend her money the way OP to wanted to even though it was perfectly legal.

YANBU but a better way to handle it is to just say at the time - I'll want your opinion on my spending habits when I'm spending your money.

I had this last September was having hip surgery in October so decided to get all the Christmas shopping done beforehand. Spent a lot of money in a couple of weeks. Barclays blocked my card. I had to contact someone. When I explained they were fine. I've decided to do it this way again this year have spent a lot of money in the last month. Also had to pay 5k on new windows to an overseas bank. Everything went through okay so far 🤞

I think banks can be damned either way much as a lot of their behaviours I don't like.

What annoys me is that there is responsibility placed on banks, yet little seemingly done about other money laundering.

If you are going to spend an unusual amount of money you can cell the bank beforehand and get the payment authorised. For example I wanted to purchase £5000 of goods on a US auction site so I just rang the bank before paying the invoice, gave the payment details and it went through with no problem. Another way is to transfer the funds to my Paypal account and pay with my Paypal business debit card. It take a bit longer to go through but as long as the money is sitting in your account Paypal will do it. Unfortunately PP give a worse rate of exchange than the bank.

did you even bother reading the OP?

She wasn't bothered about the bank doing the checks, it was the way the staff member spoke to her that has annoyed her.

Not to mention she specifically didn't WANT to spend regularly, which she shouldn't have to do given it's her OWN MONEY!