Can you please help? I am desperate. At the end of November, Nationwide froze my bank account, seemingly after a £65 credit gave its fraud team “cause for concern”.
I was asked whether I was expecting a credit of such a sum and replied immediately that I wasn’t. I have no idea what has caused this.
Despite my repeated pleas by phone, and in the branch, my account remains frozen.
I explained that I needed access to the account to move money from my online savings to cover Christmas spending and my authorised overdraft but the building society won’t budge.
I can still use my Nationwide credit card but not my debit card, and I cannot log into online banking at all.
Customer services seem to think that it is acceptable to leave me in this position for a full month over Christmas.
CW, by email
My immediate suspicion was that another bank had reported that your account had received funds from a scam victim – most likely because someone had mistyped your account details into a fraud report by accident.
The banks will freeze accounts they believe are being used to launder funds. Staff aren’t allowed to say why they are doing this, as this is considered tipping off. That said, the sums involved are usually far more than £65.
I asked Nationwide to take another look at your case and within a day or so it had unfrozen your account – a great relief as it was the week before Christmas.
It turned out that someone at Barclays had wrongly reported your account, and that Nationwide staff had somehow misread a £65 cheque payment you had made as a credit.
It tells us: “We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customer. Although the initial error wasn’t made by Nationwide, some details were missed by us when reviewing the case. This resulted in an unnecessary block on our customer’s account and [it] staying on there for longer than it should have been. We have offered £150 as an apology for the inconvenience caused, which has been accepted.”
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions: http://theguardian.com/letters-terms
