British Retail Tesco Bank: 20,000 Customers Lose Money (bbc.com) 65
An anonymous reader writes:Tesco Bank has halted online payments for current account customers after money was taken from 20,000 accounts. The bank's chief executive Benny Higgins told the BBC he was "very hopeful" customers would be refunded within 24 hours. About 40,000 accounts saw suspicious transactions over the weekend, of which half had money taken, he said. Customers will still be able to use their cards for cash withdrawals, chip and pin payments, and bill payments. The bank is blocking customers from making online payments using their debit card, although transfers between accounts and to other people are still allowed, a spokesperson said. Earlier, the bank confirmed some accounts "have been subject to online criminal activity, in some cases resulting in money being withdrawn fraudulently."
defining some terms (Score:2, Informative)
For those of us in the US (and others not familiar with UK banking terms), a 'current account' is like a checking account in the US (not a savings account or other account).
Not enough Checking (Score:2)
a 'current account' is like a checking account in the US
Apparently not the ones at Tesco Bank where it seems there is clearly no where near enough checking going on.
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Tesco opened a number of stores in Phoenix a few years ago (under the name Fresh 'n' Easy), before quietly withdrawing after they decided they weren't making enough in the competitive Western grocery market. They didn't do any banking there, though.
Why trust a cheap supermarket to be a bank? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what you get when you trust a company that deals in low-price groceries and let them run a bank... They are not the same thing.
Re:Why trust a cheap supermarket to be a bank? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much all bank these days suck
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Why are credit unions better? There're still made up of people, just like normal banks. Why does everyone praise credit unions so highly? They never explain their praise...
~An ignorant millennial
One of the things I didn't miss when leaving the UK is the UK banks.
In terms of sheer utter awfulness it goes UK Banks > US Banks > US Credit Unions.
Credit unions aren't supporting a stock price on the stock market. So they don't pull nearly as many stunts as banks. They tend to be more localized as well which somehow makes them better.
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JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!
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You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Credit unions have long term loans (eg 30-year mortagages), are regulated, and deposits are insured (by the NCUA). What makes them better is that they are non-profits owned and governed by the members of the CU. Therefore, the actions they take are for the benefit of the members, and not stockholders.
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FDIC and NCUA are both Federally-backed insurances and equally safe.
https://www.gobankingrates.com... [gobankingrates.com]
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Think of it more as a Co-op bank.
From Wikipedia: "A credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative, democratically controlled by its members, and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at competitive rates, and providing other financial services to its members."
So instead of a shareholder-value based mega corp, you have a member-owned (works for the *stakeholder/customer* not shareholders) bank. Guess which one is going to pay money for security without trying to cut it to the
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Probably the best reason people praise them is because they tend to be local organizations instead of big national chains. This means that the people working there are more likely to know you personally, especially if you attend any of the member events that most credit unions have from time to time. This makes customer support much, much better. Odds are if you have to call your credit union frequently, you'll be dealing with the same people most of the time. Contrast this with a huge bank that likely has a call center.
I left my local CU and went to one in a neighboring town because the people working there were personally nosy and judgemental. I don't want to build a personal relationship with some busybody with whom I have nothing in common, thanks.
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That's a good assessment of credit unions in general. A few clarifications from your post and others.
Quick background: I'm on the board of one of the largest credit unions in the country. The vast majority of credit union boards are volunteer. No pay. There are a handful of credit unions that pay the board, but it's rare.
You didn't say specifically about profits, but there is a misconception that credit unions don't care about profit. Like any other business we need to retain a portion of earnings. If we di
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A credit union is made up of the members that have accounts there. It is in the best interest of everyone to keep costs down and minimize risk and loses (such as fraud). The real boss is you, the member, not a stock price, not a CEO, not a trader in a cubicle or even a sophisticated computer algorithm.
Credit Unions won't lie to you, to make an extra buck, there is no incentive to do so.
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They aren't beholden to Wall Street shareholders. Credit unions reinvest any profits back into the credit union itself, typically this manifests itself as better interests rates (lower rates on loans, higher earnings on CDs etc) for members. Compare to a bank where they have to meet Wall Street expectations by fucking over their customers.
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Credit unions are better. The Wells Fargo branch office in my neighborhood lost a lot of business when a credit union opened up next door. I moved my accounts over when my bankruptcy attorney told me that Wells Fargo would freeze my accounts when they get the legal paperwork.
Yeah, I'm part of a credit union through my employer (it is no loner solely for employees any more, however) that I have my mortgage through, but my wife didn't want to leave Suntrust when we got married for our day to day banking. But at least credit unions aren't completely soulless like most banks are.
Credit Unions vs banks (Score:2)
Credit unions are better.
Not necessarily. They might be better for a particular customer but you can't claim they are universally "better". Especially since you didn't define what "better" means here. Credit Unions are really just small banks with a novel ownership structure and they might be willing to hustle a bit more to get your business. But there are a lot of drawbacks to credit unions too. They don't usually have the latest and greatest technology. They have fewer ATMs and branches available. Membership can be restric
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My experience has been the reverse.
I use a credit union for my banking and:
1. The Android app works better than the Wells Fargo app.
2. There is a huge network of ATMs that I can use. Probably larger than that provided by any bank.
3. Membership used to be restricted, The first credit union I joined was limited to one employer and they were so tied into that employer, they could access the HR systems to look up my salary history. But now, credit unions are so open that the concept of limited membership is a j
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1. The Android app works better than the Wells Fargo app.
There probably are exceptions but this isn't true as a general proposition.
2. There is a huge network of ATMs that I can use. Probably larger than that provided by any bank.
Seems unlikely. Most ATMs are owned by banks so unless they are reimbursing you this cannot be true.
3. Membership used to be restricted,
Many credit unions still have restricted membership to this day. Not universally true I'll grant but plenty do not accept anyone.
4. Investing services? Do you really invest through your bank and not through a brokerage service like ETrade?
LOTS of people invest through brokerage services provided by their banks. All the big banks have huge investment divisions and are broker dealers.
5. Branches? My credit union has more local branches than the big banks, but the only reason to go into a branch is to deposit money in my HSA.
Maybe you live somewhere weird but this is again just simpl
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I'll take everything you wrote as quite likely to be wrong, since you took my statement out of context and used the lack of context to infer a meaning that was clearly different to the meaning of the complete statement.
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Every CU I know is part of the CO-OP ATM network, meaning you can use any of the other CU's CO-OP ATMs, fee-free. All 7-11s I've every visited are CO-OP ATMs as well. Do you know how many 7-11s there are in the US?
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They might be better for a particular customer but you can't claim they are universally "better".
Yeah really, they're lousy for laundering cartel money and campaign slush funds. I mean, who wants to be tied down by a bunch of rules?
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Every local credit union in my area are up to their ears in housing mortgage debt, and we're in a local hosing bubble... I couldn't run away from them faster than I have.
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And not just them. I think it's a result of some de-regulation act. On the shop retail front, Marks and Spencer have a bank as do the Cooperative. I don't think Asda operate a bank as such but they do offer financial services and probably have an ambition to be a proper bank since others are doing it. I wouldn't be surprised to find Sainsbury offering financial services too. Virgin Money is pretty much a bank from a record label although Branson admittedly branched out into a host of different markets befor
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Years ago they were in trouble for emailing people their passwords in plain text. They don't have a good track record on security.
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Current password.
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It is still too early to know what actually happened here.
It is actually far more likely that this is the result of some kind of very good automated phishing scam, than it is of someone penetrating the bank's core systems.
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That's what you get when you trust a company that deals in low-price groceries and let them run a bank... They are not the same thing.
First of all, Tescos in the UK are not a "low-price groceries company". They are middle market. Low-price means Aldi and Lidl.
Secondly, the UK government guarantees to recompense customers of bank and building societies by up to 75,000 GBP if the bank goes bust. If Tesco were unable to make up for the lost money that would count as going bust. I have an account with Tesco Bank and even if I had lost anything in this hack, I would not be at all worried.
In fact I'd be more worried if my money had been los
Weasel words in action...24 "working hours" (Score:2)
I heard the interview; 24 "working hours" was quoted, so assuming 8 hours work days and that's 3 days elapsed time.
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I have a suspicion that the Tesco Bank staff might be working a bit longer at the moment. I pass their Edinburgh office on the way home from work,I wonder if there will be more lights on than usual this evening.
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Fewer lights, they recently fired a lot of them that work there and moved other jobs to Glasgow and Newcastle.
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You can't write ogham on a quipu you insensitive clod!
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If, by "the old days", you mean the Middle Ages. Banks haven't stored all the cash and gold on deposit with them in the vault in many centuries.
Shift of responsibility (Score:2)
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Tesco will compensate - at least to some degree. And they are probably better placed with a large retail network open 24x7 to provide emergency cash withdrawals than normal banks. Having said that for some people it will be a problem.
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How can they simply say "oops, money was taken from your accounts" and get away with it?
They have said nothing of the sort. There is no question of customers not getting their money back, and Tesco have said so. In fact it did not even need to be said. This is the UK, not the Central African Republic, or the USA.
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I got the funds back, but BofA said there was no way to prevent this from happening again.
They're right, the ECH transfer process operates on faith and trust. A merchant can initiate a draft against anyone's checking account, and there aren't really any safeguards once you have access to the system.
The BANK loses money, not the customers (Score:3)
The money was withdrawn WITHOUT proper authorization by the customers, it was not the customers who loses the money, but the bank.
This is in UK, not the US where banks just push all its losses to its customers (really, why do you guys in the US still put money into banks? They can just set your balance to zero and claim "identity theft"!), this quote in the article already made it very clear.
"Any financial loss that results from this fraudulent activity will be borne by the bank," Mr Higgins said. "Customers are not at financial risk."
curso NR 10 (Score:1)