The staff member could not explain why the cards were not working, although she said the bank had not blocked the new card, and she also confirmed it had been set up and activated correctly. The staff member suggested Dinah try the transaction again, and then loaded an override on the card. She also suggested Dinah contact Meta because it might be getting blocked at that end.

Dinah made several more attempts that day before Meta blocked her business social media accounts. Despite considerable correspondence with Meta by both Dinah and the bank, the accounts remained blocked for several months. Dinah complained to the bank about the impact the block was having on her start-up. Two months later, it finally responded with an offer of $5,000 to resolve the complaint.

Dinah complained to us that the bank improperly blocked her cards and transactions attempts. She also considered the bank had given her poor advice by suggesting she continue to attempt the transactions, which led directly led Meta to blocking her accounts. Dinah said the block, and length of time it took to get it removed, had a serious effect on her start-up. 

Our investigation

We learned that Dinah’s repeated transaction attempts set off the bank's fraud detection system, and the bank, suspecting the payment instructions might be connected to fraud or financial crime, blocked further attempts. In doing so, it acted in accordance with the terms and conditions of the cards, which said that it could refuse to act on any instruction it suspected might be related to a scam or fraudulent use of the cards. 

We could not find that the bank had breached any duty or obligation to her. The volume and speed of the transaction attempts on two cards made it difficult to establish why the attempts were failing. The staff member was correct when she said the new card was not blocked – it was the transaction attempts to Meta that were blocked, and Dinah could have used either card elsewhere. The staff member also rightly suggested Dinah wait for a while before trying again.

Even if we had found that the bank had acted wrongfully, we would not have held the bank responsible for the impact on her start-up because Meta had been responsible for nearly all of the delay. Also, no action by the bank directly caused the losses suffered by her start-up. We did, however, conclude that the bank failed to deal effectively with Dinah's complaint by taking two months to respond to her formal complaint and failing to respond to her follow-up requests for updates. We accepted that she had suffered stress and inconvenience, but any compensation we recommended would not have come near the bank’s offer of $5,000. We therefore advised Dinah to accept the bank's offer.

Outcome

We did not uphold Dinah’s complaint, but we recommended she accept the bank’s offer of compensation which she did do.