What to tell Mum about responding to scam calls/do banks ever ring you?

[Motherbear44]

Mum is 95 yrs and was recently widowed. My sister and I visit once a month but both live away (I have to get a 3 hour flight, sister has a 3 hour car journey). She gets twice daily welfare checks from carers).

Mum received what we are sure was a scam call two days ago. She knows to put the phone down, but somehow she was unnerved when they said that a £900 and £100 payment had been taken from her account. She phoned the bank although apparently they did not get back to her. She may have slept through their phone call, but not sure if she called the correct number.

She does not have online banking
She does not use a computer or ipad
She only uses the smartphone to receive WhatsApp calls
She never buys anything from the internet (we would always do that for her)
She uses her card when we take her out to restaurants and shops
We could probably set up telephone banking because we have POA, but would need to do it with her beside on next visit. I'm not sure if this would really help.

She mostly uses cash to pay for things like the cleaner and gardener.

So I feel that there really is no window of opportunity for scammers. Can anyone reassure me? Do banks really ring people up to tell them about suspicious activity? Surely if there was a concern they would just freeze the account anyway.

I want to tell Mum if she ever gets a call and they tell her about such activity she should tell them to send her this information in a letter. Would that sort of action ever backfire.

How about you have her details online? If she gets a call like this you can then look at the bank account online to doublecheck if any money suspiciously has gone out of her account then she doesn’t have to deal with anything. She doesn’t have to ring anybody and then if you do find there is a problem you can report it online as a fraud.

If you have power-of-attorney, then you should have control and actually access the bank yourself through online banking then she doesn’t have to deal with any of the phone calls. Just tell her not to deal with it and you will sort it out.

With my bank, if activity is suspicious, your card gets stopped until you phone them. They never phone you about it.

Banks don't have humans call about suspicious activity because scammers have made it impossible for them to communicate this way. You should be able to find out how the particular bank in question would contact her if you look on their website - here's what it says for NatWest and Santander (see 'When we'll contact you')

You do need a way of responding to scam calls, though. As @Workingclasslass says, you should get access to the accounts yourself and then she knows the answer is always you'll need to call my daughter and explain this. If she had given information away to this scammer you'd now have a real problem as you'd be left trying to communicate with the bank when they don't know who you are.

Can she get a mini-statement from a cashpoint to confirm these transactions didn't happen?

I have told my parents to put the phone down immediately with any calls about money. A stop would be put on their card if there was an issue - these scammers know full well they are calling old women and they play to that.

If you have POA I would set up internet banking on your phone so you can check in real time and generally keep an eye. Also get through the POA discussion with the bank sooner rather than wait for a crisis.

Be wary, because if you get onto a list the calls never stop. We have had to basically turn off my step-mother's phone because of this.

Thank you for the advice. My sister has online access to the household account for paying bills etc. (it was impossible for me because I don’t have a uk bank account). Mums pension account sort of didn’t seem to need it. I need to ask her what she wants on my next visit.

The information about a stop going on the account/banks never ringing you is reassuring. So telling her to ALWAYS put the phone down is the key. This has been my advice, but I suddenly had this doubt …. Could there be a reason that a bank would ring you? It seems not

Thanks for continued help in negotiating protecting our elderly parents.

I got a phone call once from First Direct about what they thought was suspicious activity on my account. That was a few years ago certainly but it was a genuine call

My husband bank call him regularly, mainly to try and sell him products but not to inform him of dodgy activity.

My bank will send messages to me via text to inform me that they have blocked my card due to suspicious activity. And then they phone me if I try to use the blocked card, but this is just to make sure I have my card and then they can unblock it. This has happened a couple of times at outdoor events ( Christmas market). It may be that the card machines have GPS they are not on the network they normally operate on which the bank security picks up or there are people operating scanning machines in the area. I think it’s more likely that they are temporary sites and bank security are over cautious.
It’s a real pain, so I now use iPhone pay which adds another level of security.

So I think that bank security stops a suspicious payment before they inform you usually by text or by post. They block the card involved until you contact them to reactivate.

If your mum has no access to online banking and makes no payments online then she shouldn’t expect to be contacted. If money is going missing then that would be down to whoever administers her accounts. It is worth both you and your sister having access to the online account so you can pick up any odd activity or just reassure your mum that everything is fine. We all trust our siblings but people do steal from their own family. An ex employee of mine left her mother homeless when she emptied her bank accounts. If the bank have notice of the POA they may keep a closer eye on it for that reason. Everyone always blames the bank for not alerting them.

They may well have contacted her if she has no email or a text facility set up with them. Does she have carers or other regular visitors who could have used her card? Without knowing what the bank said to her it’s tricky knowing if it was a scam or not.

I would contact her bank and ask what their policy is. Explain that you’re asking on behalf of your elderly mum who has received a call. There might be one or two circumstances in which they do call. But - as a general rule, saying no thank you and putting the phone down is best. If they can’t contact her and they need to, they should write.

I changed the bank phone number to kine snd then told them that the bank will never phone them

I've had a phone call from my bank (CoOp), but they'd texted me first asking me to call their fraud line on the number on my bank card, rather than giving a "scammer" phone number. I rang them bank, it was real.

These days, if I got a phone call from the bank, I’d hang up and call them back on the fraud line number on my card.

Thank you. Another reassurance. I will attempt to set up online banking when I next visit. Changing the phone number sounds like a good idea too.

Mum would not let any carer have access to her cards. However a family friend does - started during Covid when they needed help with little bits of shopping. I trust her like I would a sister. About a year ago one of Mum's cards seemed to have been lost. This lady had helped her use it in her hairdressing appointment. I know it was Mum that was confused, but to protect the family friend, my sister set her up with a Revolut card so that she can buy emergencies like stamps and milk. This was done to protect her! It would have been awful for some money to have been stolen from Mum's account and the finger pointed at a genuine angel.

On avoiding scams generally I think the police suggest 'take 5 and tell 2 people' and there's this little book of big scams which is worth a look https://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/central/advice/thames-valley/fraud/little-book-big-scams.pdf

I heard that some people get their parents a phone which only allows a handful of preprogrammed numbers through. This allows them to stop all the scam calls

Activate the PoA, certainly for UK based sister. I am PoA on my parent's account. All correspondence, texts and phone calls come to me. I have full oversight on the account and am able to speak directly to the bank on the phone or in branch if there are any issues. It makes things much easier.

Yes, get a True Call. It's been endorsed by trading standards. You plug it into the landline socket and then plug the landline into the True Call.

You programme it with "safe" numbers like yours - and they will ring straight through. For anyone else, they get a recorded message telling them the line is protected and screened, so to please say who they are and the person they are trying to call will be notified. It then rings and tells you who is on the line and you press a button on your phone to accept or decline the call.

Scammers don't tend to want to tell people who they are and then wait on the line while you decide if you want to speak to them. Very effective - I put one on for my elderly parents after they'd been scammed.