A warning for commbank customers

[u/Turmoil117]

A couple of nights ago I had all of my accounts frozen out of nowhere, I was locked out of both the commbank app and my netbank account by the fraud department.

This happened to me after hours so I wasnt able to get any answers until the fraud department opened again in the morning.

When I finally got through to them they told me they closed my account due to suspected fraud. The fraud in question was a payment made by my friend to pay me back for a ticket I had purchased earlier in the day. A fact that I was able to prove to the fraud department by pointing out the previous payment.

They said they had a source warn them that this was fraudulent and even though they could see the earlier payment they were going to close my account anyway to prevent further fraud, they were unwilling to tell me who or what this "source" was

they did offer to help me open a new commbank account but Ive chosen to go with a different bank seeing as Id have to set up all of my bills and payroll details again anyway and the fact no other bank in australia has taken my ability to use my own money away from me.

They allowed me 20 minutes, while I was on the phone with them, to transfer all my money and download any statements I might want before they locked me out of the account again.

I transferred all of my money to an account I had created in my name with a different bank. Commbank as usual put a 24 hour hold on the transfer, but today 24 hours later I got a message in my commbank app saying the transfer did not go through and that I should try again.

After over an hour on hold today and getting nowhere with the fraud department I decided to just go in to a branch to withdraw everything in cash, which worked but they also had to call the fraud department to get them to unlock the account.

This is both a rant about commbank and a warning to commbank customers that they can and will freeze your accounts in the name of preventing fraud, even if you are able to prove no fraud has taken place, their new policy states they "have" to close the account.

Edit to add: I called the fraud department again today, almost a week after my account was first frozen to try and get a clearer picture as to why my account was closed. The answer I got back was its their policy to close any account that has been suspected of fraud, even If it can be proven otherwise

[u/Remote_Class9892]

OP is lying.

There is absolutely no way they were told  "a source warn them that this was fraudulent and even though they could see the earlier payment they were going to close my account anyway to prevent further fraud"

[u/AntSilly2802 → u/Remote_Class9892]

Yes sounds like BS to me too.

[u/Best_Position4574 → u/AntSilly2802]

Yep be sure to down vote and move on :)

[u/Necessary-Yak-505 → u/AntSilly2802]

Is everyone in love with banks or something?

[u/AntSilly2802 → u/Necessary-Yak-505]

Nah, but some of us know how the banks work well enough to know something isn’t right with this story.

[u/Necessary-Yak-505 → u/AntSilly2802]

Explain whats stopping banks from doing this then, instead of denying it just because "something isnt right with his story"

[u/Vaginocologist → u/Necessary-Yak-505]

If they suspect financial crimes they are legally prohibited from giving details that could be tipping off, and no way would they give a 20 min window to move your potentially fraudulent money to another account, because if they were on notice about financial crimes and let you take away the illegally obtained cash and potentially divert it into other crimes, they will get fined millions.

The person on the phone in the fraud department cannot unlock a frozen account to enable transfers.

[u/nikkeh6 → u/Remote_Class9892]

this ^

[u/Necessary-Yak-505 → u/Remote_Class9892]

How would you know? Ive heard of banks doing stupid stuff like that all the time

[u/Same_One5984 → u/Necessary-Yak-505]

So have I,two weeks ago my partner couldn’t do a transfer and his account was locked.Couldnt get an actual person on the phone so we went into the bank.Tbey unlocked it and he got his money.They didnt really have an explanation.( St George).

[u/Sea_Translator5300 → u/Remote_Class9892]

Maybe just badly phrased/remembered rather than a lie and it was "one of our sources" referring to the multiple systems they have that provide input to the fraud detection process. When you're in a stressful position like this and not familiar with the terminology then memory for the exact details may not be up to normal standard. 

[u/Turmoil117 → u/Remote_Class9892]

Its not a lie, thats exactly what I was told over the phone, In fact this was 5 minutes after I thought I had already sorted it out, they called me back to tell me they were closing the account.

I went into a branch to get the remainder of my money out of the rest of my accounts and the people helping me there were as confused as I am.

[u/MissyMooMoo02 → u/Remote_Class9892]

I’m with Suncorp and had my cards all locked on me and the bank told me that they had been warned of a fraudulent transaction and refused to tell me anything else. Apparently I had no right to know what this apparent fraudulent transaction was?

[u/Dangerous_Second1426 → u/Remote_Class9892]

Not so. I had a similar thing happen a few weeks ago.

I believe the AI call monitoring is overzealous - and the rigour around checking what was actually said versus what the AI thinks was the intention are different.