Santander and PayPal refused to refund £450 stolen from my account

SOMEONE has fraudulently opened an account with PayPal using my name.

PayPal withdrew £450 from my Santander Everyday account on 0ctober 9 last year. It refunded this, but took it back the following Friday, saying I had to reclaim the money from PayPal.

It said the money would be credited within seven working days, but nothing has happened. PayPal now says I must get the £450 from Santander — but Santander says the refund must come from PayPal.

P. L., Dundee.

Something peculiar was going on here. the person who committed the fraud also gained access to your Santander account details. they had used your details to open an account with PayPal and link it to your Santander everyday bank account. Unfortunately, sometimes these events can occur rather closer to home than we would like to think possible.

PayPal accepts you did not open the account and that someone committed identity fraud. it says that it has limited the account and has now refunded £ 450 to your bank account. it apologises for taking a while to do this.

Santander has spoken to you at length, explaining how you can protect yourself from fraud.

You have decided to complete future banking transactions in branch for your own security.

there has been an unexpected bonus to come out of this sad affair. While PayPal was dithering, Santander decided that it would refund the £450 — so you have received two £450 refunds.

Santander has kindly decided that in view of the particular circumstances, it won’t be asking for its money back, so you are £450 to the good!

You are not the first person to write to me who has suffered fraud from the most unexpected places. the lesson we must take from this is that we should all be very careful about protecting passwords and account details, even from those we feel we should be able to trust. MY EX-WIFE and I are both having trouble getting the full winter fuel allowance. We were married until 1995 but then separated amicably. By sheer coincidence, we now live two doors apart. I’ve been here for 19 years and she moved into her bungalow about ten years ago.

For many years we were given the correct winter fuel allowance. But in 2018 the authorities decided that another person lived with me and also with my former wife, which meant we were both paid £100 less.

In 2018 I phoned them and was able to convince them I was single. But I received another letter last November in which they, once again, had me down as living with someone.

G. M., Durham. the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says its records show you and your former wife are still married. it says the pension service had not been informed of your divorce.

either you had forgotten to inform them and the winter fuel allowance was paid in full anyway for those intervening years, or else a computer glitch has deleted details of your divorce.

the good news is you are both being paid a top-up so that you receive the full winter fuel allowance to which you are entitled.

DWP is contacting you to request a copy of the divorce decree absolute so the system can be corrected. I CANCELLED my Plusnet contract in June and was told there would be a fee. I informed my bank there would be a final increased monthly payment, after which my direct debit should be cancelled.

Two months later I received an undated, unsigned letter from Plusnet, stating that my ‘outstanding debt, of which they had contacted me several times, had been passed to a debt collection agency’. I wrote pointing out that I had expected them to collect the cancellation payment with my final monthly fee and offered to pay by cheque. My letter was ignored and I received a letter from a debt collector demanding the account balance plus a 25 pc administration fee.

Mrs M.W., Abingdon, Oxon. there are times when you wonder how companies so utterly daft can remain in business. Plusnet’s attempts to contact you were via your old Plusnet email address — which you obviously no longer had.

it then told you that as the balance was valid, it was unable to recall it from the debt collection agency but would write off half the £62.51 as a goodwill gesture.

that’s nonsense. of course a company can recall a debt.

Plusnet now agrees you did try to pay the outstanding amount by cheque. it has written off all charges, apologised and also sent flowers as a goodwill gesture.

You letter is a reminder that when you leave a company, you should leave your direct debit open until you are 100 pc sure the final bill has been settled. Any money owed to you may also be paid using the direct debit.