to be cross that my bank treats charitable donations as fraudulent...

[WorkingItOutAsIGo]

..and declined my donation to the Poppy Appeal although I have plenty of money in the account, because their systems flagged it as potentially a fraudulent transaction?

I'd filled in the appeal and sent it back by post, with a donation in memory of my grandfather who died in WW2. They've declined it and rang me to check it was legit; I confirmed it was, and then they said 'right you need to ring the payee and get them to present it again and this time we will pay it'.

I understand it's important banks protect our accounts but surely in this week of all weeks, to decline a donation to the Poppy Appeal is just heartless. I am really cross because my own 'in memory' donation was turned down and that tarnishes the gesture.

But this is much worse than that. Surely most people who have that happen to them will never get round to ringing up the charity and going to the effort of making the donation again. The impulse is gone, people are busy, you may not have a phone no etc etc. And so charities must be losing out on loads of potential donations as a result of this thoughtless and cruel bank policy.

Would you rather that the opposite happened and that someone used all your money to donate to charity and then when you contacted your bank about it they made you feel bad for wanting it back from a charity?

Charities won't lose out because if you really want to donate then you will. A lot of the big banks do fundraising inhouse for charities as well as their local community.

And it doesn't tell the bank which company it is when it automatically declines. It's to do with codes, the safety of the site, spending patterns and unusual or out of the ordinary transactions. So they are not doing it on purpose, it is a software that is protecting your money.

Can I ask, do you know the bank are actually declining all charitable donations? Or did you just get caught on one of the random fraud checks that banks do? I can't believe your bank treats all charity donations as fraud.

It's because charitable donations of small(ish) demoniations are one of the most common ways that fraudsters target accounts. I can't remember how they do it exactly, but it's got something to do with fake cards, account numbers, etc etc.

I'm being very vague, and hopefully someone will be along soon who is slightly more awake than I am, but it's a well known method of fraud used by the scummier members of society.

I had money taken from my bank account by fraudsters using my debit card number to pay for things when the card wasn't present.

Before each largish transaction they would do a small charitable donation to check the card was still working/ there were funds in the account. As I temporarily had funds in the account from the sale of some shares they ended up taking around £10,000.

It may be upsetting that they have messed around with your donation but the banks are trying to protect you. (Wouldn't normally defend bankers but they did give me all my money back.) You really don't want to feel like I did when I thought all the money I'd saved from my SAYE scheme over more than 5 years had just disappeared.

My husband and I have both had fraudulent trnasactions that are small amounts to charities. Fraudsters do this to test that the card details are correct before going for a huge amount.