Scams & Fraud

Escalate quickly.

Certain payment-service and fraud complaints have shorter business response periods before FOS referral. Report criminal conduct through the appropriate police/fraud channels as well, but a crime report does not replace the bank complaint.

Make the bank answer the reimbursement issue.

Do not allow a complaint to collapse into “you authorised the transfer”. The question may involve the applicable payment-service/scam reimbursement rules, warnings, vulnerability, intervention and the bank’s own handling. Ask for a reasoned final response.

Preserve the payment trail.

• Bank/payment confirmations and beneficiary details.
• Messages, emails, adverts and website addresses used by the scammer.
• Telephone numbers and call times.
• When you first realised something was wrong and when the bank was notified.
• Any warnings shown by the bank and what you told it before payment.
• Police/Action Fraud or other crime reference where relevant.

What this hub is for.

After a scam or fraud, speed matters - but so does preserving the evidence. The immediate payment-recovery route, the bank complaint and any later FOS complaint are distinct stages.

Do not collapse different problems into one complaint.

Separate the underlying transaction or service dispute from any data-protection, credit-reporting, complaint-handling or professional-conduct issue. They can arise from the same events while using different legal frameworks and different escalation routes. This separation is one of the easiest ways to keep a complex case understandable.

A fraud complaint can have several parallel jobs.

First protect the account and preserve evidence. Contact the bank or payment provider promptly, record the transaction details and keep messages, call records, website details and payment instructions. Reporting the criminal conduct and disputing the payment are separate tasks. A police or fraud report does not replace the complaint to the payment provider.

If a regulated bank or payment firm rejects the complaint, the financial complaint rules and FOS route may apply. The key issues can include whether the payment was authorised, what warnings were given, what the firm did after notification and which reimbursement or payment-services rules apply to the transaction.

Do not send sensitive evidence casually.

Keep a clean evidence pack, but redact passwords, full card details, security answers and unnecessary identity documents. If a scammer still has access to an account or device, security and recovery come before building a perfect complaint chronology.