We should expect our banks to protect our money but sometimes their policing of our accounts might be considered overzealous. Other times it makes sense.
We were contacted by a reader in his 80s and lives in China off his Irish pension. Or at least he did until he received an email from his pension provider to say that his February payment had been returned as his Bank of Ireland account was blocked.
“I immediately rang Bank of Ireland and spoke to a call centre staffer who suggested I write to the bank,” he says. “I explained that I lived in China and that post was unreliable probably due to the Ukraine war and fewer flights from Europe to China.”
To highlight this he told the bank that his pension provider posted him a pension statement every month “and in the last year I only received one”.
He was told that someone from the bank would ring him back. “But this didn’t happen.”
A day later he rang the bank again “and got through to someone who told me that the bank had written to me asking for some information and as I hadn’t replied they blocked the account. Again, I explained the post situation.”
He was given an email address to send documents to and he immediately sent a query asking why his account had been blocked.
“I received a reply and I quote: ‘The reason you are having problems is due to some outstanding documentation requested by the bank from the other account holder on your joint account.’ Who happens to be my wife. I replied saying we had never received a request for information and again explained the post situation.”
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The next day he emailed back asking what information was required. “We received an email addressed to my wife from a welcome adviser, and I quote: ‘I hope this letter finds you well as this is the registered email on your account for contact. The problem is that this bank has been trying to contact you in a number of mediums to request very important documents be supplied to us.’ It then mentions the following: a letter from my wife’s employer, a copy of her employment contract, a payslip with her name and her employer’s name, a letter from the Chinese department of Social Protection,” our reader writes.
He replied by email with copies of a letter from his wife’s employer and her work contract. He also explained that the company doesn’t issue payslips and that there was no department of social protection in China.
A few days passed and the welcome adviser replied that he had “processed the documents but couldn’t give us a date when our account would be unblocked but said ‘I can tell you that I believe the account will be available to you at the earliest possible time’”.
Almost two weeks later our reader was hospitalised “and as I keep very little money in China, I wrote to the welcome adviser asking if my account could be unblocked urgently so that I could pay for my treatment as I don’t have health insurance. I didn’t receive a reply and consequently had to borrow money to pay for my hospitalisation, much to my embarrassment.”
He says that since then he has written several emails to the bank employee, who be believes is “doing his best to help but the resolution seems to be out of his hands, in a different department. I have also rung the bank’s call centre but all they can do is pass on messages to which there is no response.”
He says it also raises the question of “why the bank didn’t email us when they admitted to having our email address on file, which would have saved all this hassle. We have been customers of this bank for over 25 years.”
We contacted the bank and received the following statement: “Banks are required to contact customers to request updated documentation to ensure that ‘Know Your Customer’ regulatory obligations are fulfilled. Our processes and communications in this case should have been much better and we apologise to the customer, especially as they were particularly inconvenienced at a difficult time. The requested documentation has been received, the account is unblocked and we will continue engaging directly with the customer to ensure everything is fully resolved.”
Brian asked by AIB to fly home from Spain to access his funds
We also heard from a reader called Brian who was prompted to contact us after his AIB debit card was declined at Dublin Airport early last month when he was flying out to Spain for a long-term stay with his wife. Both Brian and his wife are retired.
“On March 8th my card was declined at Dublin Airport,” he writes. “When I arrived in Spain I phoned AIB and was told my access was disabled and I would need to call to my branch with my passport to have it enabled. I was not told how or why this happened.”
A week later, with his account still inaccessible, he was told by a staff member to post a signed letter to his branch with all his account and personal details and a photocopy of his passport and was assured that this would resolve the issue.
“I did this and I received a call from an official on March 24th telling me that the issue could not be resolved until I called to the branch. In the meantime, I would now be able to transfer a daily amount of less than €50 from my account to my Revolut account to assist me. I doubted this would work. I tried a number of times and it doesn’t,” he says.
Brian’s State and work pensions go directly to this account “and now I can’t even transfer funds to my wife, who also banks in the same branch. It also seems that any direct debit set up on my debit card will not be paid as my card is invalid. I cannot access my account to check anything.”
He says he appreciates that the bank has “to be cautious in safeguarding my account, [but] may I just point out that I did not request a stop on my card/account nor did I make any report of attempted fraud on my account. AIB have undertaken this action. In the meantime, I have no access to my pensions which I am fully reliant on.”
He says that the only solution to the problem being put forward from the bank is that he flies home at great expense “to present myself in person to verify my account. This entire saga has been ongoing since March 8th and at this stage is causing me enormous stress and inconvenience not to mention embarrassment because I have had to rely on someone else for my living expenses. This situation is totally unacceptable as I have tried everything to resolve this issue.”
He made an official complaint to the bank on March 27th and received a call from a member of staff to say she would investigate. More than a week passed and he heard back from her, “and nothing has changed. I’m still locked out and there’s nothing can be done until I call to AIB in Bray with my passport. She said there had been a fraudulent attempt on my account. She also said that AIB had attempted to contact me. She appeared unsure when I said that I have no missed calls on my phone.”
He suggests that the reason she was unsure was because “there was no attempt to contact me. Almost everything they have told me so far appears not to be true. It is impossible to contact them and the email contact I got from my branch appears to be useless as they do not respond.”
He suggested to the bank that they at they could have written to his Dublin home address “and I could ask a neighbour to open my post or my solicitor could formally write to them or they could contact my wife who banks in the same branch. Or they could close my account and reopen with new numbers.”
We highlighted the issue with the bank and within 24 hours the problem appeared to be resolved. We received this detailed statement from AIB.
“An individual called AIB claiming to be our customer on March 7th and, after passing multiple security questions about our customer’s account, raised the suspicion of our agent, who asked additional questions, which the caller was unable to answer. The individual was impersonating our customer and trying to carry out a serious fraud. We moved to protect our customer’s money immediately. As a result a block was placed on the card and the online banking for this account was disabled.
“AIB attempted to call the customer’s phone on March 7th and 10th but was unsuccessful. We wrote to him advising him of the block on his account and our attempts to contact him.
“On March 8th we were contacted by the customer, who was advised that due to the attempted serious fraud carried on his account he would need to present in a branch to verify his details in person while we told him his direct debits would continue to be processed. This was because we needed to verify that the sophisticated fraudster was not trying to access our customer’s money again.
“On March 14th an AIB agent advised the customer could send handwritten instructions to lift the block to his branch in an attempt to help the customer. However, this will not be acceptable in all cases, especially in the instance of a serious fraud attempt, where a fraudster could be posing as our customer. For this reason we asked him to attend our branch.
“Making an exception in this instance, AIB has set up the customer on online banking and ordered a new card. The customer subsequently lodged a complaint with AIB, and we are responding to him.
“We urge customers to protect their account details from fraudsters who will use those details to try to scam them, and we do all in our power to protect our customers from being defrauded. We are sorry that [our reader] was unable to access his account while abroad. However, the security of our customer’s money is paramount.”
