anyone ever been DeBanked?

[LittleRob]

After finding myself the wrong side of a bank, who I've been fighting them for a while.. I spoke to a friend of mine who pointed me here. His exact words " You need to put this on mumsnet, cos that place will have an opinion on what's happened to you... "

So firstly has anyone on here ever been #DeBanked, cos my story should serve as a warning to anyone that is a customer of a high street bank.

post your questions and buckle up for a story that will make your hair turn white... fall out and raise more questions than it anwers

my background I'm a nobody, yet my bank chose to debank me, and sieze all my families money after a near fatal accident... and this could happen to you.

more to follow, it's been a long day and I just introduced myself a few hours ago.

someone asked for the bit before getting debanked...

so this is how I ended up talking to the bank....

I'm still on page 4/5 you lot raced ahead and are on page 7

I know what you mean, it's only been 13 hours since you started this thread. Don't rush him people!

Ok, so you’ve explained your accident, something very heavy hit you, everyone around you knew you weren’t right but you didn’t get help - most bizarre thing ever.

So, what’s the bank thing all about?

sorry had to go and sit on the naughty step, have a time out.... this place has moderators it appears... who knew...

well it the debanking sort of has been covered, the topic has been in the press. Mostly famous/ infamous people having their bank accounts taken away. Usually they get them back... or it all goes very quiet... while some deal gets done out of sight.

I'm neither, famous or infamous but they still took my bank account away. If this can be done to nobodies like me, other folks should really have a plan in this day and age.

I didn't have a plan, never really thought I needed one

My family could have done with a plan...

right I'm on page 5 now.

'I could have fallen off the tower I was on and really gotten hurt.'
Yes, it's good you avoided a serious injury.

'the GP told me not to worry it was all fine and sent me home turns out I had a brain bleed... broken eye sockets, a fractured skull 2 ruptured discs in my neck. Plus a whole raft of injuries... which I explained but he didn't see too worried about...'
Pretty useless GP I would say.

A few months ago I wouldn’t have believed this, but weirdly I’ve now seen it happen to several people, and not necessarily involving large sums of money.

A friend’s friend gave her £6000 to buy a new car after an inheritance, bank account (her only one!) closed down for over 3 months to investigate, inheritance friend visited by police accusing him of money laundering. Despite his solicitors providing all evidence quickly the account was not reinstated until the bank’s legal time limit was reached.

Business colleague earned a large lump sum (around £40k) from an internet business she runs, all above board, again account closed for over three months, luckily she had another account. She had immediate evidence to show exactly where the money had come from, but the bank still held the account.

Have seen other very similar cases.

I don’t know if this has always happened or if it’s ramping up for some reason.

I have another bank account now as back up.

Edited to add: obviously details have been changed!

Amazing

So you had this terrible injury, ended up registered disabled, and once you were feeling better a few months later you went to talk to your bank… about what?

I’m assuming you had a cash flow problem and needed their help, and they initially sympathised. So what happened within 72 hours for them to close all of your accounts?

I feel like that 72 hours is the missing piece of the jigsaw…

Chef’s kiss 💋

Think I've just suffered my own traumatic brain injury trying make sense this.

No one tell my bank.

Who were you suing if you were the employer who then had to make your own staff redundant?

I agree with @Obscurial, bank overzealous behaviour is common. This thread is classic mn, of disbelieving. Most MN'ers are so naive they would never believe any individual or organisation could ever do anything suspect.

On a minor scale I know of banks conduct below.

I've had 2 friends with cash car sales whose bank have closed their account for over a week, nearly 10 days whilst they investigate.

At work I get quite a few phone calls from our bank re payments to suppliers, who they suspect are fraudulent, but aren't, such as subcontractors doing a job worth many £1000's of pounds. Worse still sometimes they stop the payment, claim they've called me, but they haven't, and I don't find out that they haven't processed it till the next week. The banks fraud overzealousness is more or a pain than a help.

After the initial phase of injury, i did have to speak to our bank. we turnedover in the region of 700K had 200K over advance orders to be filled. All that with a small business overdraft of 3K, which we didn't really use as a facility. (this was at the point banks started to reign in debt in the wake of the 2008 financial crash) I submitted out cash forecast to our new bank manager (when we still had those) and requested a new overdraft of 20-30K as a just incase.

He told me "he was firm but fair" poor lad hadn't started to shave, I explained I'd been a customer for a long time. We as a family and as a business user had effectively "bought money" assorted financial products and services from his business and it was just a matter of how much does money cost today.

On hindsight perhaps he or I couldn't grasp I was heading into a PTSD moment.

he then laid down the law and wanted our overdraft to reduce by £500 a month till it was gone, as we didn't need it. I pointed out it was easier to maintain a small overdraft and then when needed talk in business terms on getting a new facility. This was the best starting point, instread of having to start from scratch, which I'd read on the FSB site a while before.

"Our Business partner" from the bank as he told me he'd liked consider himself said that he was as part of our compnay then also told me that, our business no longer met the criteria and we would be moved phone banking and online services only.

My explanation of debt and risk ratios made no difference to him, I then said well I will have to review my relationship with them, as our business partner appears to have been out in the sun without a hat.

His passing question why did I need a facility I answered with well I think we need a cash cushion just incase, we've got an underwritten insurance claim to deal with there will be some expenses which we'll get back.

That was that 72 hours later I was trying pay for my taxi back to aiport, card declined tried to by a coffee at the airport card declined. Got a few calls from my team leaders their cards had been declined... got a call from my wife she was unable to access our accounts.

The being debanked moment is like standing next to a bomb that's exploded, or better still waking up startled from a power nap to find yourself abroad without anything useful to hand or access to other than what you have in your pockets.

so planning for being debanked might be a sensible idea while you don't need to worry about it.

everyone is entitled to an opinion, I reserve mine or invoite you to try doing a month. Just using the cash you have in your pockets right now... to service all your outgoings.

So the bank withdrew your accounts - they are quite entitled to do this in the terms of the contract you entered with them. And it is more common in business relationships.

How much of a credit balance did you have at that moment?
How long was it before you asked for that balance to be transferred to an alternative account? And what was their response?

40+K in the business account, no idea what was in the personal checking account, asked for a meeting after I got back to UK 20+ hours. Couldn't get my car out of the carpark at airport card declined, had teamleaders "project managers" ask me for advice. Things got pretty lively very quickly, I explained to them that this was some sort glitsch, if they could to expense it all or call into office and we'd take care of it from my personal account.

had a phone consultation with our business partner at the bank, who informed me he had closed our business accounts. As I had not complied with his instructions, I pointed out he was putting himself in a very bad position. I asked for access to my money, his answer was he was responsible to the bank and it's share holders to protect them from the likes of me.

click... no more conversation....

and then my personal account disappeared and all our online banking lcoked me/ us out.

then we had to run a business that needed 20K a month just to open the doors... and we had no way to process payments coming in.

anyway that was a very exciting time to be alive

but they would have to inform the customer, otherwise it's a breach of contract.

a party can't enter into a contract in full knowledge of facts that are not made clear in simple terms to both parties.

I would choose team bank everytime cos they can make it up as they go along "Might is Right!"

How long was it before you asked for that balance to be transferred to an alternative account?

And what was their response?

(You include a lot of extraneous information in every post so it's very hard to be clear what has actually occurred and that's why people are struggling to sympathise).

because I'm debanked and have no access to any of my money, my legal case fails as I can't pay my solicitors and I end up with a 500+K legal bill.

How? Surely you told the solicitors about your banking problem? Did they not offer a conditional fee arrangement?

I struggle to believe that the costs of what sounds like a relatively straightforward claim rose to £500K.

I got the impression he was referring to a personal injury claim rather than a debanking claim. PI costs rack up very quickly.

This literally just gets more confusing by the moment. Each time you post @LittleRob your stories just seem to get wider, vaster, off on tangents to a completely different level!

You may be suffering the after effects of a severe brain injury, but you don't come across as autistic one little bit. Autistic people tend to have a forensic nose for detail and an obsession for explaining everything properly (albeit at the expense of becoming very, very long winded).

Barclays are the crappiest bank ever
I make multiple complaints to them and pay ££££££ in overdraft fees
total cunt and I’ve made my feelings clear

but they haven’t dis owned me yet!

@LittleRob you keep saying you’re meant to be dead .. you’re making it very confusing as you were never ‘dead’ 🤷‍♀️

could not open a new business account, asked for the money to be paid to me. Bank refused said they could only release the money to the named entity on the account, then they claimed money did not exist.

these requests where made less than a week of me finding myself without access to my accounts.

new banks asked why was I debanked, I was unable to give an answer they declined to open new account.

it took a year to get a limited access account opened which was not suitable for a business to use.