The Times - UK (2020-08-01)

58 1GM Saturday August 1 2020 | the times

Money

5

Fears over buy

now, pay later

Continued from page 57

warnings, no small print to say how

damaging it could be. There was no way

of checking if I could or couldn’t afford

it.” Part-time jobs have helped her to

pay off most of the debt, but she may

struggle to get a mortgage.

Another woman had two letters from

debt collectors acting on behalf of

Klarna after she failed to pay a £2.99

delivery fee for a pair of trainers in Feb-

ruary. She said: “It was quite shocking

because I’m one of those people who

never misses a payment. The problem is

that it’s just as easy as using PayPal.”

Luke Griffiths from Klarna said:

“When a consumer is unable to repay

us, we lose money... At no point will the

customer face additional charges or in-

terest on their outstanding fees, nor will

their credit score be affected. Ultimate-

ly, Klarna assumes 100 per cent of the

risk of non-payment.”

Clearpay said: “The service is free if

payments are on time. Where the cus-

tomer does not pay on time, access to

our service is immediately suspended.”

Laybuy said: “Customers are encour-

aged to contact our support team if they

have any questions or a complaint.”

My bank thinks

I’m a middle-aged

money launderer:

how thrilling

W

hat immediately

springs to mind if

I say money

laundering? I think

of the Colombian

drug lord Pablo Escobar, or Marty

Byrde, the accountant who

accidentally ends up looking after

the cash of a Mexican cartel in the

Netflix series Ozark. Or HSBC, of

course, which got caught doing it for

Mexican drug dealers.

It certainly does not bring to mind

me, a north London mum-of-two

whose maths skills leave much to be

desired and who doesn’t have the

kind of money worth laundering.

A wipe with a wet flannel would do.

And yet my bank suspected I was

a money launderer. At least I think it

did. That’s the only way I can explain

two weeks of extreme banking

weirdness last year.

At the time I put this

strange period down

to Barclays being

particularly useless,

but this week,

reading the tale of

a person whose bank

account had been

frozen, I realised it

was something more.

Barclays must have

assumed I was washing

dirty money for the Crouch

End Cartel.

I was first alerted to a problem

when cash dispensers wouldn’t give

me any money. At first I assumed it

was a card issue, but the Barclays

customer service team told me that it

was a problem with phone banking.

Someone from that department

told me to speak to the fraud

department, who said that I had to go

to a branch to get the matter resolved.

It won’t surprise you to learn that this

didn’t resolve anything either.

This experience of getting royally

messed about by banks is not exactly

rare, but what elevated it was the fact

that no one would tell me anything

about what was going on. Everyone

I spoke to just acted in a very odd

manner. Call me paranoid, but they

seemed anxious and were keen to

suggest that I speak to someone in

another department. I was a hot

potato being thrown from colleague

to colleague.

Then suddenly, after ten days or so,

I could use my account again.

Just as there had been no

indication or explanation

for it having been

frozen in the first

place, no one called

to tell me that it had

been defrosted.

Barclays

continued to shrug

its shoulders, whistle

and look the other

way when I asked for

an explanation.

It left me feeling

gaslit: I could see there

had been a problem, but

no one else appeared to

agree with me.

The issue of frozen

accounts crops up again and

again for readers who just can’t

get an explanation. At the heart of

Above: Jason Bateman as the money

launderer Marty Byrde in Ozark

the problem is that if

a bank suspects you of

laundering money, it not

only doesn’t have to tell you

that it is about to freeze your

account, but it also isn’t

allowed to by law.

Were a staff member to

explain what you were

suspected you of doing,

the person who told you

could be sent to jail for

five years for “tipping

off”, under the Proceeds

of Crime Act 2002, and

face an unlimited fine. No wonder the

people working at the call centre were

anxious. One wrong word and they’d

be behind bars.

That puts bank employees in a very

difficult position. Usually banks will

either not tell employees why an

account is blocked, leaving them to

try to fix a problem that can’t be fixed,

or they alert them to the problem via

the notes on the customer’s account,

in which case they must keep schtum

while dealing with a frustrated caller.

Most likely, a suspicious activity

report was sent to the National Crime

Agency (NCA), which investigated

me. My life is so boring that finding

this out was a bit thrilling. Did they

find out about the time I took home a

couple of pens from the work

stationery cupboard? What if they

found out I once weighed my gala

apples as Granny Smiths at the

supermarket checkout?

Your life is on hold if a bank freezes

your account. The NCA has seven

days to respond to the bank and will

either extend the time to investigate

or lift the suspension. If it extends, it

then has 31 days to investigate and

the bank is still not allowed to provide

you with any information.

It is only at the point at which it

tries to get a court order to investigate

you further that it tells you what is

happening. It is understandable that

banks aren’t allowed to tip you off

that they think you may be a criminal,

but it is a surreal, Kafkaesque

experience not to know anything —

even after it’s over and you have been

deemed to not be a money launderer.

I still have no idea why my account

was flagged as suspicious. We’ve seen

cases where those with Middle

Eastern surnames have their accounts

suspended. It made me wonder if it

was actually my husband’s very

Welsh name that was the problem.

He has an awful lot of vowels and

only two consonants.

But banks insist that there is no

profiling. I must have made a

payment flagged as unusual, or my

account was looking like a target

for money launderers, who need

“mule” accounts for their cleaning

operations.

It’s not like in the movies, which is

why middle-aged mums with bad

maths can suddenly find themselves

under suspicion even when they are

perfectly innocent — but then I

suppose that’s exactly what a money

launderer would say.

Home

Economics

Jessie

Hewitson

Deputy Money Editor

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Supermarket swoop

Amazon is offering free grocery

deliveries on orders over £40 for

Prime customers in the South East.

The range includes fresh fruit and

vegetables, meat, alcohol, snacks and

cleaning products. Delivery for

baskets worth less than £40 is £3.99.

The service is available in London,

Surrey, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and

Bedfordshire. Amazon has promised

speedy delivery and says that many

orders will arrive on doorsteps the

same day. It wants to expand to

millions of customers across the

country by the end of the year.

Young drivers’ bonus

Car insurance for young people is

cheaper than at any point since 2015

after the cost fell sharply over the past

six months. The average motor

insurance premium for 17 to 24-year-

olds was £1,102 between February and

July, dropping from £1,182 in the

previous six months, according to

Compare the Market. A survey by the

comparison website suggests that

nearly half of young people with cars

have found it harder to afford the

running costs because of the financial

impact of coronavirus, which has put

many of them temporarily out of work.

At last, a good 123 deal

Santander has been criticised for

increasing the fees on its popular 123

accounts, but students and

apprentices can get a free version with

better perks. The account pays 1 per

cent interest on balances up to £2,000

and 15 per cent cashback on purchases

in certain shops. It comes with a free

four-year 16-25 railcard worth £120,

which gives a third off rail travel.

Parental warning

A third of parents do not put any

restrictions on mobile phones or

tablets before they hand them over to

their children, leaving them open to a

bill if the little ones spend big on apps.

About 80 per cent of parents told a

survey by the phone company EE that

their child was spending more time

online than before lockdown, but

31 per cent were not using software to

restrict access. In May a nurse faced an

unexpected bill after her ten-year-old

daughter spent more than £2,000

playing Roblox on her iPad. The game

is free but offers in-app purchases. Tilly

Norton said that her daughter, Holly,

had no idea that she was spending

real money. Apple at first refused to

refund the money, but did so after

The Sunday Times got in touch.

did you know?

Star Wars, Pokémon

and Mickey Mouse coins

are legal tender on the

Polynesian island of Niue,

a South Pacific island

that has a population of

1,600

IN THE

SUNDAY TIMES

TOMORROW

plus

Managers earn millions

from frozen funds

special report

Ban on the Bank

of Mum and Dad