CRANE ON THE CASE: Nationwide has frozen my bank account… for being too charitable

I have endured a lot of panic since last Thursday when Nationwide unexpectedly blocked my current account. It is my only bank account. 

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

I contacted the bank for answers, but it informed me that I would have to wait until the following Thursday to hear back about an investigation. 

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

No good deed goes unpunished: Our reader’s charity work led to his bank account being flagged as a fraud risk

This would enable me to purchase a return bus ticket to reach the nearest Nationwide branch. I hoped that by visiting a branch in person, I might have a chance to access my locked funds. 

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

I don’t know why the account was frozen, but I recently received some money as an inheritance and think that perhaps has something to do with it. I provided proof of where this payment had come from, but it didn’t seem to help. 

I understand the need for security at Nationwide but I think this is really unjustified. J.W, Stirling

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

As I have written before, having a bank account is an essential service in this day and age – and it’s not right that so many innocent people are having theirs ripped away. 

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

You were at work – about 100 miles away from where you live – when you discovered that a block had been placed on your account, and had to borrow cash from someone just to get yourself home. 

Often in these cases, people are simply sent a letter telling them the bank ‘no longer wishes to provide them with banking services’ and told to await a cheque with their balance on. 

But fortunately – although I’m sure you didn’t feel very fortunate at the time – your account wasn’t closed for good, only frozen. 

You were promised a call from a fraud specialist within a week of your account being closed, but this didn’t happen until later after I had got involved. 

Seven days is too long to go without a bank account anyway, but making you wait even longer is unacceptable in my opinion. By this point, you were running out of food. 

You were told by Nationwide that, if you wanted to withdraw any money while you waited, you needed to go to the nearest branch with a form of ID. 

That was a problem, as you live in a rural area and didn’t have any money to get there. You resorted to begging Nationwide to allow you access to £10 for a bus ticket, and when that wasn’t possible you made a complaint. 

In the meantime, you opened a current account with another bank, but as it was the end of the month you couldn’t arrange for your salary to be paid into it in time. 

Strapped for cash: Our reader was left with no money for transport or even food when his current account was frozen 

After you had been without your bank account for five days, you contacted me and I got on to Nationwide to ask what was taking so long – and whether it would give you some money to live on in the meantime. 

In the course of doing so, I uncovered a surprising reason for what had happened.

It turned out that you had raised suspicions by doing too much charity work. 

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

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

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

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

Whilst there is a difference in the amounts paid compared to the refunded amounts, this is due to an agreement between you and Sainsbury’s which I won’t go in to here.

Once you were able to speak to Nationwide’s fraud team and explain this, it said it was happy with the clarification and removed the block on your account. It has also agreed to pay you £50 compensation. 

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

Helping out: J.W’s purchases of food from Sainsbury’s were intended for a food bank

A Nationwide spokesperson said: ‘Due to a high volume of unusual payments on our customer’s account, we placed a block on his debit card and online banking as a precaution while we investigated the issue. 

‘The block was removed as soon as our customer was able to clarify the reason for the transactions. We apologise to our customer for the delay in reviewing his account and will be offering him £50 compensation.’

I do need to give Nationwide some credit for explaining what the issue was – in the end. Too often, banks are tight-lipped, even after someone has been proven not to have done anything wrong – and that is immensely 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 because they have been ‘debanked,’ there is another who has fallen victim to a nasty scam where a criminal has taken money from their bank account. 

But I think it is taking too long to get things sorted when issues are flagged. 

If the fraud team had called you on day one, you might have had your account back within hours – rather than struggling to get by for 11 days.