Sh*t! Someone has stolen £15,000 from my business bank account, and Abbey are doing FA....

[legacy]

I'm self employed and went online to check if a cheque had cleared today, and found a whole string of fraudulent withdrawals from my account over the last 3 days

My current account has been completely emptied of just under £15K.

I have not lost my card, given the details to anyone, and we have mega-high security anti-spam/spyware software on our business network, so I cannot think how this has happened? The last transactions I used my card for before the bogus withdrawals were at a station ticket machine, and in a restaurant, so could soemthing have been cloned?

I have spent the last two hours being batted about between customer service departments at Abbey Business Banking and am being told that there is nothing they can do in the short term, that I have to file a 'dispute' and that it may take 2-3 weeks for any dispute to be resolved/ get any compensation/ return of stolen funds.

HELP - I am incensed with rage at both the b*strads who've done this, but also at Abbey, who will not do anything to help!

I have asked to speak directly to their fraud department, but have been told that they will not be dealing with it.

Have asked for a temporary overdraft until funds are returned - told not possible.

So now I have filed a complaint and been told that I will 'get to speak to someone' within 48 hours about it.

I am SO SO ANGRY - particularly with Abbey - surely they have a duty to do more to help in a situation like this??

I told the last person I spoke to that I will be calling the media about their lack of support for small businesses if they don't get something sorted out, sooooo - any media folk out there - let me know, and I'd be more than happy to help you write the story

We had £575 taken out of our Abbey account in small amounts and paid to Airtours. At the time we were always in overdraft- basically when our salary was paid in it cleared us back to zero. We took out an Abbey loan and this money went within 2 days of the loan being paid into our account. Any other time and there wouldn't have been enough in there to cover it, suggesting an inside job.

Abbey were very blase about it and told us that whoever it was "thought someone had bought them a holiday" (WTF??!!)
Someone they had never met who live at the other end of the UK.

We didn't go to the police. I wish we had.

Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble sorting it out.

Abbey are offhand and shite, imo and ime. HSBC much better, again imo and ime - lots of contact if they suspect fraudulent activity. I did have a card used to buy a phone from Vodafone and HSBC just gave me the money straight back, no problem.

Legacy, I hope this gets sorted quickly and I expect you'll be starting a thread asking which bank's best soon... We moved our current accounts, savings account and mortgage away from Abbey at the beginning of the year. Loathsome bank.

Quick update - or not, as the case may be

I finally managed to get through to someone to e-mail my forms etc (damn postal strike!) late on Friday, and got all the reassurances about them getting onto it straight away as it was such a large amount of money etc etc.

I sent a message to the relevant disputes team asking them to get in contact with me IMMEDIATELY as there are various aspects of this I want to discuss, not least when I'm going to get my money back!

And did they call me yesterday? Of course not.

So no doubt I will end up spending most of today trying to get through the blardy fortress that is their 'customer services' (sic) department.

(Thanks by the way WWW - I will contact you)

I'VE GOT THE CASH BACK !!

No contact from Abbey, but I went online to check no more payments had gone out, and they have credited the full amount back today....

PHEW!

I'll never know I suppose, but I wonder if the fact that I gave them a deadline of tomorrow before going to the media about it had any influence.

Certainly I think hassling them must have played some part - 5 days ago they were telling me that it would take "at least 3 weeks" and there was 'absolutely nothing' that could be done to speed up the process

Anyway, I've got it back, that's the main thing. But how stupid of them not even to contact me to confirm it??

So now I can start reviewing my banking arrnagements....

thank goodness you got it back.

i had a cheque book stolen as a student, someone wrote a cheque for £500 and the bank paid it, putting me way over my overdraft limit. what annoyed me the most, is as i was almost up to my overdraft limit anyway, they had started bouncing stuff, but they let the cheque go through i remember going to report it to the police, then going to the bank and they showed me the actual cheque, was really weird seeing it all written out and signed with my name but in different handwriting.

Legacy-that's fantastic news.

I know it's alot of hassle changing banks but I think you should definately give it some thought.I closed all my accounts with them and even moved my mortgage as I was so disgusted by their customer service,or lack of it!