Noisy British Consumer Show Please

business.kid

I'm getting mucked around by a bank with Internet accounts. I think someone opened one in my name, and defaulted. The <expletives deleted> won't answer my email. The Irish branch told me to <expletive> off and ring the English branch (who won't answer me). They keep sending me mail, and I can't find out what gives.

I need a noisy consumer TV or Radio show in England to haul them over the coals and get some answers. Like perhaps Joe Duffy here but worse. Any suggestions?

Thanks in Advance,

The Business Kid.

cast_iron

You mean to say you can't get a single person in the bank on the phone? I find that hard to believe. There's no point in wasting time with eamils, and it's too early for TV shows and the like.
You have to talk to someone from some office in said bank before you can expect to resolve this.

krudler

cast_iron wrote: »

You mean to say you can't get a single person in the bank on the phone? I find that hard to believe. There's no point in wasting time with eamils, and it's too early for TV shows and the like.
You have to talk to someone from some office in said bank before you can expect to resolve this.

Calling shenigans on that, "they wont answer me" ? what so they know its you calling and everyone in their call centre hides?

business.kid

Good point. I kept the first post brief as I don't like long moans in public.

I did the following.

1. Check the emails. They're not phishing. No links. Just 'a document has been posted in your mailbox' stuff. Sometimes three in the one day.

2. Email the English 'security fraud' email address on their website - no acknowledgement or reply.

3. Phone the English customer Services. I gave them my email, and she checked it; there is an account relating to it, and it is overdrawn. But because I said I hadn't opened the account, she wouldn't divulge any more details.

4. Try to log in. My standard passwords didn't work; the security question was 'wa sabbe' What language is that?

5. Email again making a freedom of information claim, which was also ignored.

6. Phone the Irish customer services, asking for an email address to send these to; They gave me an email. I emailed them the problem, and attached 12 emails. I got a reply back from a 'Fraud Risk Analyst' in their 'Financial Crime Unit' telling me that they only deal with Ireland, and my query related to England!! But I was to get on the phone to the UK again, (I got advice on the menus) and try there. I was giving her a financial fraud on a plate, and she didn't want to know!

Do you see why I wanted a consumer show? I might turn around tomorrow and find they have nuked my credit rating over this b.s.

business.kid

Forgot to mention. Banks routinely ignore email issues as they are used to phishing scams. This isn't phishing. The first thing I have to do is get someone to look at the emails, before they can realise this is genuine.

cast_iron

Oh, now I think I understand.
Someone opened a bank account (in a foreign bank) and used your email address as one of the contacts.
The bank do not know you, don't know your address, phone number, and maybe not even your name?

All that's happening is you are getting emails from a foreign bank telling you an account is overdrawn? And no person from the foreign bank has tried to contact you about the account bar these emails?

Simple solution: Ignore them

Anyone (especially a bank) that appears to use emails as a primary contact are not who they say they are...

foggy_lad

cast_iron wrote: »

Oh, now I think I understand.
Someone opened a bank account (in a foreign bank) and used your email address as one of the contacts.
The bank do not know you, don't know your address, phone number, and maybe not even your name?

All that's happening is you are getting emails from a foreign bank telling you an account is overdrawn? And no person from the foreign bank has tried to contact you about the account bar these emails?

Simple solution: Ignore them

Anyone (especially a bank) that appears to use emails as a primary contact are not who they say they are...

are these emails asking you to send money or payment to any particular account? sounds like a scam with someone trying to get you to pay the overdraft thinking it is your own?

business.kid

The emails are genuine. I'm not worried about paying.

I am worried about identity theft. All I really want is reassurance that this mess doesn't relate to me. And as the email they have is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, that's a reassurance I need. The buggers won't even tell me that.

kmick

Why do you care - this is the UK and all they have on you is an email address. Just ignore it but first write them a letter and copy the Irish bank, the Irish data protection office www.dataprotection.ie, the UK data protection office http://www.ico.gov.uk/, your local td and anyone else you care to mention.

Outline your issues logically and log all correspondence you have had with them (dated if possible) tell them not to contact you again at your email address or you will lodge a complaint with both the Irish and UK data protection offices.

Oryx

Your most promising hit here seems to be point 3 in your post above, UK customer services. Cos you got someone who confirmed the existence of an account. So its UK based. I reckon you gave up too quick. Ask for a supervisor, explain you do not want information given to you, you simply want your details checked against what they have, in a yes or no confirmation. See if they will work that way. Explain (calmly -your deleted expletives above have me wondering if you get hot or something) your situation again, and again and again, but if youre getting nowhere ask to be passed up the line each time. It requires patience, but Ive done it with eflow, vodafone, boi, and eircom when Ive had to deal with hassle or my hubbys accounts.:)

Other than that. Joooooooooe Duffy.

In any case if you are not being sent snail mail demands, or getting calls, I doubt they have that information, and I wouldnt panic overly...yet. But I do appreciate you wanting to get to the bottom of it. No point finding out in a years time that you have 10 uk mortgages to your name.

daheff

its probably that somebody has the same name as you in England....their email address is firstnamelastname@gmail.com whereas yours isfirstname<dot>lastname@gmail.com and the area that set up the customer data incorrectly.

If you are really worried about it then talk to a solicitor. If it were me i'd just ignore it at this stage and set anymails you get from the bank as spam

Ste.phen

daheff wrote: »

its probably that somebody has the same name as you in England....their email address is firstnamelastname@gmail.com whereas yours isfirstname<dot>lastname@gmail.com and the area that set up the customer data incorrectly.

Not true with gmail at least.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313 wrote:

ometimes you may receive a message intended for someone whose address resembles yours but has a different number or placement of dots. For example, your address might be homerjsimpson@gmail.com, but the message was sent to a Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com. What's going on?

Gmail allows only one registration for any given username. Once you sign up for a particular username, any dot or capitalization variations are made permanently unavailable for new registration. If you created yourusername@gmail.com, no one can ever register your.username@gmail.com, or Your.user.name@gmail.com. Furthermore, because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won't change the actual destination address. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com, and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours.

If you're homerjsimpson@gmail.com, no one owns Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, except for you. Sending mail to Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com is the same as sending mail to homerjsimpson@gmail.com, or even HOMERJSIMPSON@GMAIL.COM. If you're getting mail addressed to Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, most likely someone was trying to send a message to Homer.J.Sampson@gmail.com, or Homer.J.Simpson1@gmail.com, and made a mistake. You might even get messages from mailing lists or website registrations because the intended recipient accidentally provided the wrong email address. In these cases, we suggest contacting the original sender or website when possible to alert them to the mistake.

For security reasons, when you log in to Gmail, you must enter any dots that were originally defined as part of your username.

Note: Google Apps recognizes dots. If you'd like to receive mail with a dot in your username, please ask your domain administrator to add the desired username as a nickname.

steo87

business.kid wrote: »

'wa sabbe' What language is that?

'Wa sabbe' is a Maltese phrase. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it is definitely Maltese. (A quick google translate search confirms that: http://translate.google.ie/translate_t#auto|en|wa%20sabbe)

I have a feeling that the bank you should be contacting is Malta's national bank (http://www.bov.com/) - they should be able to tell you what's going on.

dietcola

hmm perhaps if you worried someone is scamming you in your name down the bank then maybe the plod is your next port of call... id def phone the bank tho and dont be brussed off, if you mention fraud they should put you through to someone...

as always when dealing with call centres... start the call by asking for the name and reference number of the person who answers (for your records)- this always seem to put them on their guard... and if they dont help... ask for the manager... and so on and so on.

business.kid

Why do you care - this is the UK and all they have on you is an email address. Just ignore it but first write them a letter and copy the Irish bank, the Irish data protection office www.dataprotection.ie, the UK data protection office http://www.ico.gov.uk/, your local td and anyone else you care to mention.

I care in case my credit rating is nuked over this account I don't own.

'Wa sabbe' is a Maltese phrase. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it is definitely Maltese. (A quick google translate search confirms that:

Thanks for that.


Your most promising hit here seems to be point 3 in your post above, UK customer services. Cos you got someone who confirmed the existence of an account. So its UK based. I reckon you gave up too quick. Ask for a supervisor, explain you do not want information given to you, you simply want your details checked against what they have, in a yes or no confirmation.

I think you're right. Joe Duffy is a good idea, but I really want his British counterpart. Hence the title of the thread.

No point finding out in a years time that you have 10 uk mortgages to your name.

Amen to that!

Thanks to everyone on this . . . At times like this I hate being in an open plan office.

tallaghtoutlaws

OP none of this makes sense to me:

Do they have hust your email address? And if so what is emailed to this email account from the bank? Like if they send you emails do they use your full name or any of your actual details?

Or do you know they actually have used all your actual details? And if they have why can't you pass the security questions considering you know all your details i.e name address DOB etc etc...Why do they even ask this security question.

So is it just your email address they are using

or

Is it everything?

cast_iron

According to the info the OP has provided, this "bank" has no info other than his email address.

Of course, no one would want 10 mortgages attached to oneself in a few years time, but I've yet to meet a bank that would attach 10 mortgages to any account with only an email address as the sole point of contact - ever!
Does anyone realise how ridiculous that appears? Especially as they are a foreign bank?

I do not blame the "foreign" bank for not giving you details on the account attributed to your email address. If I rang up, knowing your email address (VERY easy to find out, ie. send me an email), and demanded to know personal details of the account in question, I would hope the bank in question would refuse any requests for info (just as the bank from UK has done to the OP). Otherwise, you send me an email, and I should be able to request details of said bank account - far form secure.

As others have advised, OP, get onto someone in charge in this bank. A supervisor should put this to bed rather quickly. To expect a noisy TV show like Watchdog, etc., to follow this this up (all based on absolutely nothing but an email address!!) is pushing it at touch, no?

business.kid

Fair Comments, tallaghtoutlaws & cast iron.

The thing is: They have an email address which hardly received any circulation. I JUST DON'T KNOW if they have my address, phone numbers, or can in any other way link it with me. Hence the worry.

I'll phone up Monday and be a bit more determined.

cast_iron

business.kid wrote: »

The thing is: They have an email address which hardly received any circulation. I JUST DON'T KNOW if they have my address, phone numbers, or can in any other way link it with me. Hence the worry.

And it's not something I'd entirely ignore in a hurry either. Though someone (with a similar name) with a similar email address is a likely possibility. Consumer tv shows is a touch of overkill at this early stage though. Best of luck.

MagicMarker

ffs! If i get an email from a bank the first thing I do is delete.

OP, seriously, get over it.

business.kid

cast_iron wrote: »

And it's not something I'd entirely ignore in a hurry either. Though someone (with a similar name) with a similar email address is a likely possibility. Consumer tv shows is a touch of overkill at this early stage though. Best of luck.

As Ste.phen pointed out earlier, a similar email address on gmail is unlikely. In fact the bank have FIRSTNAMELASTNAME@gmail.com whereas I have registered fristname.lastname@gmail.com and gmail resolves it to me.

What made me see red was that I got a reply from a Fraud Risk Analyst from their Financial Crime Prevention unit telling me they could do nothing and to to p*** off and get in touch with England (Who ignore me completely) with MY problem.

/turning red muttering curses, gnashing teeth

I'm getting mad even thinking about it

business.kid

Well I took the advice and made life hell by phone for the UK Customer Services. They were able to check and assure me there is no account in my name. No identity theft in any case. A few unanswered questions, but no identity theft.

Meanwhile the Irish customer relations were on. They evidently kicked that 'Fraud Risk Analyst' where the sun don't shine and the emails got forwarded to the Financial Crime Unit in the UK. They then tried their best customer massage. That went down like a lead balloon, but I haven't the heart to tell them.