Helen felt her bank could have done more on sight of unusual transactions

Helen went out for an evening with her friends whilst on holiday abroad. She got separated from her group and spent the evening with people she did not know. She has very few memories of the next 24 hours and believes her drink was spiked. Over that time there were many authorised transactions on her bank account totalling approximately €7,000.

The next day Helen rang her bank to tell them that all these transactions were acts of fraud. She found it very frustrating ringing the bank as she kept getting cut off and had to start her story over again every time she got through. She said this caused great anxiety as she was abroad and very concerned. She also found it very frustrating that she never received a call from the bank’s fraud section whilst it was investigating the situation and often did not get promised call backs from other areas of the bank.

Helen was surprised that the bank allowed the payments to go through as it was unusual spending for her and was happening throughout the night. The bank said that its security relies on authorisation – either biometric or a passcode and that all these payments were authorised using the method Helen had agreed to when she opened her online banking app account. It felt she was responsible for authorisation or had made access to authorisation easy for whoever authorised the transactions.

Helen complained to the FSPO regarding the bank’s poor communications when dealing with her issue and their failure to implement anti-fraud checks on the transactions. The bank agreed that there were service failings in its dealings with Helen at different points in the process and offered her €2,500 in full and final settlement of her complaint which she accepted