She was also unhappy about another matter. Days after learning about being overdrawn, Marjory had been unable to use her mobile banking app to make payments from her business account. She received a notification from the bank saying the payments required her former husband’s approval. The bank could not sort out or explain what had happened until two days later.

Our investigation

We found the bank did not deal effectively with Marjory’s refund request, nor did it treat her fairly or reasonably. The bank initially declined to refund Marjory because she had breached the bank’s terms and conditions, namely she had given the new card to a family member to use and had disclosed secure information to someone allowing them to make the online transactions. However, the bank relied on mistaken facts to reach its decision. One of these was a conversation she was overheard having with a family member while on hold during a call to the bank, during which she said she planned to give her card to him to use. Also, that family member could not have used the card because he was with Marjory in a different city to where the card was used. Also, there was no evidence Marjory had disclosed secure information, and in fact the security questions would have been known to many people acquainted with Marjory. The bank declined to review its decision when Marjory provided relevant information until much later after she pressed it to do so. The bank also made an error in describing the reimbursement as a goodwill payment.

The bank could not explain why the authorisation of her former husband was required to make transactions on her business account. Her former husband had been to the bank a month earlier to set up his own accounts, and the bank had discovered he was on her account authority. The bank asked him to contact her to remove him from the authority, but he refused to do so because they were separated. The bank’s failure to follow up on this matter with Marjory amounted to a failure to treat her fairly and reasonably. The bank had also initially told Marjory he could access her accounts, but this was incorrect. It also told her it had contacted her to amend the account authority when it had not. Overall, we found the bank did not communicate effectively.

We found the bank should compensate Marjory $2,000 for the stress and inconvenience caused by its errors.

Outcome

The bank paid Marjory $2000.