CRANE ON THE CASE: Nationwide blocked my bank account… because I’m too charitable

I’ve been through a lot of panic since last Thursday when Nationwide unexpectedly blocked my checking account. It’s my only bank account.

I have no money for food or transportation. On the day it happened, I had to borrow money to get home from work.

I contacted the bank for answers, but they told me I would have to wait until the following Thursday to hear about an investigation.

This morning I contacted Nationwide again urgently requesting a small transfer of £10 to my new bank account.

This would enable me to purchase a return bus ticket to reach the nearest NATIONAL branch. I was hoping that a personal visit to a branch would give me a chance to access my blocked funds.

Shockingly, my plea was rejected even though the £10 represents less than 0.005% of the total amount.

I don’t know why the account was blocked but I recently got some money as an inheritance and think that might have something to do with it. I provided proof of where this payment came from, but it didn’t seem to help.

I understand the need for security at Nationwide, but I think this is really unfair. JW, Stirling

Helen Crane from This is Money replies: I was sorry to hear that the financial industry’s fervor for ‘debanking’ has claimed yet another victim.

As I’ve written before, having a bank account is an essential service these days – and it’s not right that so many innocent people have their accounts snatched.

And like most others, you couldn’t get your bank – or in this case the building company – to give you a proper explanation.

You were at work – about 100 miles from where you live – when you discovered that your account had been put on hold and you had to borrow money from someone to get home.

Often in these cases, people just get a letter saying that the bank ‘will no longer provide them with banking services’ and that they have to wait for a check with their balance depleted.

But luckily – while I’m sure you weren’t feeling very happy at the time – your account wasn’t closed for good, just frozen.

You were promised that you would be called by a fraud specialist within a week of closing your account, but this only happened later after I got involved.

Seven days is too long to go without a bank account anyway, but waiting any longer is unacceptable to me. At this point you were almost out of food.

Nationwide told you that if you want to withdraw money while you wait, you need to go to the nearest branch with ID.

That was a problem since you live in the countryside and had no money to get there. You resorted to begging Nationwide to give you access to £10 for a bus ticket, and when that wasn’t possible, you made a complaint.

In the meantime, you had opened a current account with another bank, but because it was the end of the month, you could not have your salary paid in on time.

After being out of your bank account for five days, you contacted me and I proceeded to Nationwide to ask why it was taking so long – and if you would get some money to live on in the meantime.

As I did, I discovered a surprising reason for what had happened.

It turns out that you had aroused suspicion by doing too much charity work.

You will be volunteering for the Trussell Trust charity, which supports a nationwide network of food banks.

You had made an agreement with your local Sainsbury’s branch to donate food to charity.

You would order the food online every few days with your debit card, and then the store would refund you.

How this showed up in your bank account was there were over 80 transactions to Sainsbury’s in June and July 2023. Each was for £46.00 or £46.50, followed by refunds for amounts of £60.00 or £60.50.

Although there is a difference in the amounts paid compared to the amounts refunded, this is due to an agreement between you and Sainsbury’s which I will not go into here.

Once you were able to speak to Nationwide’s fraud team and explain this, they said they were happy with the clarification and removed the hold from your account. It has also been agreed to pay you £50 in damages.

They do say that no good deed goes unpunished, and in total you were without a bank account for 11 days.

A spokesperson for Nationwide said: ‘Due to a large number of unusual payments on our customer’s account, we have blocked his debit card and online banking as a precaution while we investigate the issue.

‘The block was lifted as soon as our client could clarify the reason for the transactions. We apologize to our customer for the delay in checking his account and are offering him £50 compensation.”

I have to give Nationwide some credit for explaining what the problem was – eventually. Too often, banks remain tight-lipped even after it is proven that someone has done nothing wrong – and that is hugely frustrating for them.

I fully understand that banks and building societies need to be vigilant when it comes to potential fraud.

For every person who writes to me about being “debanked,” there’s another who fell victim to a nasty scam where a criminal took money out of their bank account.

But I think it takes too long to get things right when problems are reported.

If the fraud team had called you on day one, you might have gotten your account back in a matter of hours. 11 days.