I get at least one scam email a week, about bookings at the hotel, and the person wanting to pay in advance. I know all about bouncing cheques, stolen credit cards etc. The thing is, I just got an email, which seems almost feasible, and it got me wondering, is there a foolproof way of accepting an advance payment? For example, can a bank transfer be "bounced"?
Roger
The first paragraph of my reply did actually answer your question. Yes it can be 'bounced' if it was sent fraudulently because somebody used stolen bank details to send the money.
Since this has got WAY off topic from my original question, I'm going to stop watching this. If anyone has any pearls of wisdom on the original question, please PM me. Thanks.
No, unless they stop it for us here in tropical France (oh yeah!) it is an 'entitlement' and not a 'concession'. People may grumble about French bureaucrats but they are not as good at lying...
It sounded like that although not admitted to me.
Once the bank had paid it in to your account they wouldn't return it, so it's not going to appear on the statement.
My guess is that the payer has got your account number/sort code a bit wrong, so the bank would return it as in effect "not known"
Be that as it may Dorothy, the payment was returned to the DWP, the bank cannot say why (do not know what was wrong with it) and the international pensions people were waiting for me to respond. It had nothing to do with statements, I can see those perfectly well myself as too the bank, but the fact that I have had to go to them to say it did not reach me, which they know, before they did anything. From the sounds of the person I spoke to when 'confirming' my account details they got something wrong with the RIB because I detected an unspoken 'Oh!' when I gave that. Who knows, it no longer matters because it is now being dealt with.
So I'm not the only one. The Pensions people in the UK are doing it deliberately to evade paying people in France, I am certain of it. I DO look at my bank account, for I need that money in the winter to pay the EDF.
Just managed to get them a while ago. They had it returned from my UK account and did not know what to do without a request for it to be resent by me! Now, like many people, I do not look at my bank statements if I am not really using the account. But I did and there was no £200 payment in, but I do not have a paper statement to be able to show them... French bureaucracy gets our goat, but are these people better. Had Val not reminded me I would have forgotten and they would have done nothing. Errr?
Brian. Why don't you have it paid into your French bank? At least that way you could be sure that you definately didn't receive it:-)
Obviously you do not know my reputation - the phone is beside me now and I can hear their message and dreadful music over and over and over...
Goodluck. I have often found that if all else fails - nag!
OK, your comment made me think about it and I have been trying to get on to the Winter Fuel team since the beginning of their working day half an hour ago. I will hack away at them and force them to do something about it.
There is nothing on any of my bank details about a returned payment. Somebody's lying and I think I know who it is. Apparently I cannot insist it is paid because it is a "concession."
I ring them every two weeks because, in my experience, if you write a letter they simply do not reply.
I have a problem there. I have no paper statements from the UK so cannot find whether I had my WFP paid in there because my card and pinsentry simply do not work. Then my French account does not have it. When I called the DWP they would not simply say whether it was paid in to the UK or France. So now I have been trying to jump through hoops. I wrote to my bank, then had to call them and do all the security question routine but they would not answer the question about received payments. So then I went to the helpline about card/pinsentry. They sent out a new pin sentry because their end showed my card is OK. I cannot do anything because whichever way I turn I am in the wrong.
So Val, if you have a similar dilemma all you can do is report it to the DWP, by letter, and hope that they will investigate. Thus far I am not having success myself, but perhaps you will. Stick with it, best of luck!
Referring to this particular scam. If they are using stolen bank details then yes. By the time the owner of the bank account discovers what's happened, contacts the bank, and recalled the transaction you have already given back the money for the cancelled reservation. These sort of scams have been around in the industry for years and as you know we get pretty good at sniffing them out. However the rest of the general public especially in France know little about them and usually don't see many.
As a side issue I wonder if anyone visiting their internet accounts on Orange and SFR recently (Orange particularly) and noticed the splash screen about Phishing? Last month both Orange and SFR systems were hacked and hundreds of thousands of customer details stolen. Basically they are telling you that if you get an email from them asking to validate your account details not to answer via the link in the email but to phone them.
That could be it of course. Britain is now so poor they haven't enough in the bank to pay pensioners! Has anybody else has this reply to an inquiry about a missing heating allowance? The official reply when I ring them is; "You will get it by June." But if you go to a social worker here for help with your winter electricity bill, they tell you they cannot help because the British government is now paying the heating allowance.
I asked my banks' representative a similar question last year and her reply was
'The safest way is for the person to transfer the funds from his account to yours or cash'
However, I do not have 100% confidence in her abilities/knowledge of the system!
I do not see how an electronic bank transfer can bounce because the Bank transfers the funds directly from the account and if there are insufficient funds in the account then the transfer simply cannot take place because the computer systems will flag it up immediately.