My stupid Fucking Father

[Itcouldbeyou]

Hi I have NC as this could be outing and please be gentle with me
I’m wondering if any of you lovely people have any advice apologies as this is long
My father 72 I would say a vulnerable person who is naive and gullible and carer to my mother who has Alzheimer’s and Dementia was contacted by phone last year by the National Lottery Centre asking him if he wanted to join a syndicate for the Irish Lottery
He very stupidly agreed and paid £700 for the year
Every two weeks or so he was then contacted by an account manager asking him if he wanted to join more syndicates for varying amounts of money
When he said he couldn’t afford it they would do a pre authorisation or a smaller amount to see what he could afford. Then they would ring back and ask to take that amount
. I believe that this phone call was recorded but the actual hard sell call wasn’t recorded . Over a period of a year he has used his life savings of around £25000 maybe more
Completely all gone from his account

While I accept that he has been the most stupid person ever and I want to kill him 😂 he is my father and murder isn’t legal so I’m stuck with him .
To be honest I am more annoyed at his bank Lloyds who never once queried these payments
My father has banked with Lloyd’s for 50 years and has never not once made any payments like this to anyone .

The only payment they have ever queried and refused to pay was his car insurance that legitimate and they stopped the payment and he had to go into the bank to authorise this payment and this was a few years ago .
So why on earth did they not stop or query any of these payments
From what I have read the banks have sophisticated fraud systems set up to alert them to unusual payments so did they not think that someone spending 2000 plus in one go every month a bit unusual

I’m asking because whenever I buy or do something that’s not within my spending pattern my card is stopped and I get a call or a text asking me if I have authorised this payment .
I couldn’t even use my card when on holiday recently as it was out of my usual spending pattern
On occasions stuff from Amazon has been cancelled because of the fraud alert
When googling them The

Lottery Centre is based in the Isle of Man and other elderly people have had exactly the same thing happen cold call and then regular amounts taken
I can’t call it a scam as he authorised the payments but like the others he was elderly and was pressured by hard sell to do so and is also a fucking idiot

However it’s the bank that I’m really annoyed with
Any advice on if I am able to complain to the bank about their lack prevention of unusual transactions on an account would be much appreciated

Cold not child

@itcouldbeyou - I TOTALLY sympathise. My father has mixed dementia and before he was diagnosed (which took over a year) he was taken advantage of more times than I could shake a stick at... not to the extent that your father has but still hundreds and hundreds of pounds of his hard earned cash that he could ill afford. (In his right mind he certainly wasn't one to give money away!)!

I went to the police, about a different incident, and mentioned it to them and they could not have been more supportive/helpful.

The whole sorry and sordid tale ended with me in contact with our local Trading Standards service - who have been exceptional. Not only have they taken all the problem ultimately out of my hands (with the help of the police) and have dealt with the companies in my stead - they have been incredibly supportive, have given me lots of information on the company's legal trading regulations - that they must adhere to - namely ' Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008' which basically means that companies cannot legally repeatedly harass customers and I'm pretty certain that your situation would fall into this category. I would urge you to contact your local trading standards and/or the police too.

I also think that the bank is in a major breach of it's duty of care to your father.

I really hope that you get some recompense and peace of mind. Hope these pointers are useful to you.

Fave please read the full thread before replying, or at least all of the ops posts.

Op Martin Lewis the expert people keep recommending is brilliant. He also recommends to a site called resolver, which has draft letters and e mails that you can adapt, it suggests addresses to send things to and keeps a record of when you are able to escalate a case and who to. It’s free to use and it’s all under your control. The site explains clearly how they may use your data (basically it’s all anonymised and aggregated to provide large organisations on how they are doing) I have used it for a similar problem and found it helpful.
www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/resolver/

Haven't RTFF but banks set up Fraud / unusual spending pattern alerts to try to catch unauthorised payments - but these payments were authorised.

Also, had to flagged to the bank that your father was a vulnerable customer? If no-one has told the bank that this is a vulnerable customer then they will treat them like anyone else until they're told?

Totally get your anger in this situation but I think going for the bank is mis-directed?

Have read the FT now, I would ring his bank and get him flagged as vulnerable, this will help them to support him better.

Asking for an amount he couldnt afford then running pre auths to find out what he had available and asking him to pay that is sure lily harassment/fraud/illegal? Anyone know? So sorry OP- my grandad did the same but with a dodgy catalogue company!

I don’t see how it can be. It’s one thing to take a one off payment authorised by someone vulnerable, but it’s quite another to set up a whole raft of them.

When he said he couldn’t afford it they would do a pre authorisation or a smaller amount to see what he could afford. Then they would ring back and ask to take that amount. I believe that this phone call was recorded but the actual hard sell call wasn’t recorded . Over a period of a year he has used his life savings of around £25000 maybe more Completely all gone from his account

Unless he agreed the 25 grand of payments then it was unauthorised. I highly doubt he understood what he was being asked.