IT meltdown outfit TSB to refund all customers that fall victim to fraud in 'UK banking first' UK bank TSB has committed to refund any customer that ends up out of pocket to fraud as it makes a feature of the measure it had to introduce last year when hundreds were ripped off during its IT meltdown. Customers will be refunded for any loss they suffer as a result of third-party fraud. At the moment, banks tend to only …
I'd guess it's more like someone in marketing saying "all banks are going to be forced to do this in a few months time so why don't we announce it now as if its our own idea so that people think we're a great bank concerned for its customers and forget all that stuff that happened last year".
Meanwhile, the banks don't intend to lose any money in this so the current talk is that they will start to levy a small fee on all transactions - not really noticeable (2.5p has been mentioned) but once introduced then increasing it is less of an issue.
Easily I guess: Money transfered to some obscure bank account in Ukraine (other nations available): quite likely real fraud. Money transfered to the victim's parents' account, most likely attempt to scam the bank.
Never underestimate the stupidity (and lack of means) of amateur criminals.
Th bank accounts used for Fraud are typically in the UK - they usually belong to unwitting mules (“your job is to receive money into your account and buy vouchers with it”). The fraudsters will have a field day. Once they know they’ve scammed someone, they’ll go back for more. We do need better checks in place.
This is quite worrying.
We know that when you provide people with a safety net, they take more risks. Moral hazard and all that.
So if someone is considering whether a request for money is genuine, the thought will cross their mind "never mind, if it's fraud I'll get my money back".
This already happens with credit cards, people are more careless because they know they can S75 the money back.
The rest of us will end up paying for the careless attitude of a few.
I don't see how TSB can implement this. Where is the money going to come from?
Perhaps they are going to introduce really annoying extra security checks every time you send money.
Force you to confirm you have double checked all the details?
"The bank last month announced that it was bringing control of its technology and banking platform in-house as it plans to shift away from Sabadell's IT partner Sabis."
Large non-tech companies seem like they'll never understand that they actually need to have a handle on IT. It's not as simple as hiring a company to run the cafeteria or take out the garbage. Especially banks...rather than hire and train people to work on the core systems they have, it's cheaper to have half the population of India learn on your systems. Maybe now with cloud taking care of a lot of the hardware complexity, companies might find a few bucks in the couch cushions to hire a competent in-house staff to run all that outsourced hardware and -aaSes.
Wow, how gracious of them to pay out of their own pocket (we all know it's the shareholders really) to correct their fuck up.
Is this a new thing now ? Company fucks up - costs customers serious money, but gets to walk away saying "oh well, you win some, you lose some" ???????
How are the big media players not all over this like a rash ?
Ah, yes, They'll fuck up too one day.
Be curious to know what the biggest individual loss due to their fuck up ? At a guess a house sale falling through with a chain ?
The point of this proposal is that it *isn't* their fuckup, its the customer's (they have plenty of their own, but not this particular situation). Said customer having been slightly foolish at best, possibly coached to behave in a certain way, tell a certain story to underpin the transfer, fed a faked invoice with dodgy bank details on, etc. It feels a little akin to Ford proposing to reimburse me for any traffic fines I incur through careless driving. It isn't the shareholders who will be refunding the stupid, it's the other customers.
They've been on t'wireless saying that this won't apply if the fraud is a conspiracy to which you are party - i.e. the obvious scenario that commentards have already pointed out.
That would appear to mean they're setting themselves up as arbiter of who is a genuine mug vs who is a conspirator. Meaning that a refusal to pay up becomes an accusation not of gullibility, but of outright fraud. The press will have a field day when they find a case of getting that wrong!
If I had been tempted either to bank with TSB or to invest in them, this would completely remove any such temptation.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
