KATIE MORLEY INVESTIGATES

CONSUMER CHAMPION OF THE YEAR If a company has let you down, Katie is here to fight your corner

LETTER OF THE WEEK Scammers stole £49,000 from our fancy dress shop

My husband and I run a fancy dress shop. Recently something happened that put a massive dent in our business, and we haven’t properly recovered.

One Friday evening in October, we took a call from a man who said he was from Lloyds’ fraud team. Someone in Spain had tried to spend £5,000 on our card, he said. It was not us, I confirmed, and he said the payment had been stopped. He advised that the culprit might have details of our other accounts. He offered to alert the Cooperative Bank and Santander, which we also bank with.

On Sunday evening, a man who claimed to be from the Co-op Bank phoned. Someone was trying to make payments from our account. He took me through security steps to protect us from further fraud. On Tuesday, a third call came, this time from Santander, warning of suspicious activity. I tried to move this money into a “safe account” as I had done with the Co-op Bank.

I had no idea at the time, but none of these calls were from banks. They were all from fraudsters, and I had been tricked into handing them £49,000.

Later that day the real Co-op Bank rang to say one of the accounts I had paid was known to it as being a fraudster’s. Santander had blocked the payment, so I only lost money from the Co-op Bank. If Santander was able to stop this fraud, why couldn’t the Co-op Bank? It has admitted it could have stopped one of the payments, and has returned £10,000 to us. But we are still £39,000 down, and deeply upset.

JP, BERKSHIRE

Hard graft by you and your husband is what has kept this fancy dress shop going all these years. It must have been a devastating discovery that £49,000 had been taken. Some people will say you should have had your wits about you when you took the rogue calls. Personally, I doubt they fully appreciate the sheer manipulative prowess these fraudsters possessed.

Last year, the Co-op Bank publicly pledged to protect its customers against fraud. Yet from what I can see, it failed to stop yours. It said it discovered that the recipient accounts were fraudulent just hours after you paid them. You made four payments, of which the Co-op Bank held one, phoning you to check it was legitimate. But it didn’t ask you enough questions to stop the fraud, which is why it refunded £10,000. Had it probed deeper, the fraud might have been spotted and the £49,000 might have been recovered.

Also, yours was a business account,

Katie Morley, Telegraph Money, The Daily Telegraph, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT

Please do not send original documents. Include an address, phone number and separate notes addressed to all organisations authorising them to talk to Katie. For full terms see P3 or visit telegraph.co.uk/go/ consumerchampion. You can also email kminvestigates@ telegraph.co.uk and from what I can see, Co-op Bank’s anti-fraud algorithms work differently for business and personal customers, as the former tend to make frequent larger payments. This may be something that requires an urgent review by the bank.

Following my involvement, the Co-op Bank has refunded the remaining £39,000, so you now have all your money back. I’m delighted, as I feel you didn’t deserve to suffer such a huge loss. But please, next time you take a call from a company out of the blue, be very, very careful.

Shortly after my father died in 2018, I bought myself a Pandora locket ring to put a few of his ashes in. All was well until my birthday in November last year, when I realised the locket had broken and the few tiny fragments were lost. I was devastated.

I emailed Pandora to say what had happened. It replied with “great news”, saying all its jewellery was guaranteed for two years. But unfortunately, as I had put my father’s ashes in the ring, it said, I had voided the warranty. Only Pandora charms should be placed in the lockets, it said.

I was furious. I pointed out that it was a locket, so surely putting something personal inside was reasonable. But it didn’t seem to care. I have had a lot of support from my friends, who are also livid, and they now refuse to buy anything from Pandora. It should be ashamed of its customer service.

KG, LINCOLNSHIRE

The pain of losing a parent is the greatest many of us will ever bear. In the aftermath, problems such as a ring breaking can feel harder to deal with. In this case, the broken ring contained ashes of your beloved father, so it was deeply upsetting.

Your friends obviously recognised this, which is why they united in support. Pandora also knew you were bereaved, and ought to have been a bit more understanding.

After your father’s death, your family received £200 from his pension. This was all the money he left behind. You spent it on rings for your mother, sister and yourself, as keepsakes to remember him by.

I asked you who paid for his funeral, since he left no other money. You told me matter-of-factly that you covered it with your own savings as no one else in your family had the means to contribute. Given that you earn a modest living working for Greggs, the bakery chain, this must have been a huge cost for you. After all you’ve done, it is very sad that the small sentimental object you bought for yourself is now broken.

What you want from Pandora, you say, is not compensation but a proper apology. You also want people to know how badly you have been treated. You say you would be happy to refill the ring with some more of your father’s ashes, which, luckily, you still have, and glue it back together. I think you deserve better than this.

I contacted Pandora and it called you the same day to apologise. It also offered to fix your ring free of charge, and is sending you a bracelet as an extra gesture. In the end the firm has been generous but, if I’m honest, I think the locket ring looks a little flimsy and I’m worried about your father’s ashes falling out again.

Recently, another reader tried to express his gratitude to this column with a cash donation. I thanked him, but explained that as a consumer champion I have ethical standards to uphold and could not accept. Then I had a brainwave. Our society doesn’t do enough to reward people who put their families before themselves, so I decided to arrange something special for you.

I told the gentleman about the situation with your ring, and we discussed how lovely it might be for you to have another piece of jewellery to remember your father by. I found a company online that could turn his ashes into a coloured stone and mount it on a ring. This way you could keep a piece of your father close to you without the fear of losing it again.

I was so happy when the kind man said he wanted to spend his money on you instead. As I write this, a bespoke ring containing your father’s ashes is being made for you. It brought tears to your eyes that someone you had never met could be so generous. But, as they say, what goes around comes around, and you deserve this.

All I ask is that you cherish this ring for years to come. I hope it brings you comfort, not just because it means a part of your father will be with you, but because it will remind you of the time a stranger’s kindness made you smile, even when your heart was hurting.

Locket ring broke and my father’s ashes fell out

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