Banking and Payments
Card fraud, scams that tricked you into transferring money, and banks that refused to reimburse when the rules say they should.
This is where the burden of proof works most strongly in your favour, and where refusals are most often wrong. For unauthorised card transactions, the bank must prove you authorised the payment. For authorised push payment scams, reimbursement has been the default position since October 2024 and a refusal has to be justified.
The refusals we challenge most often share a pattern: gross negligence asserted rather than evidenced, vulnerability not identified at all, or a generic on-screen warning treated as though it were specific advice about the scam that actually happened.
One thing we want to be unambiguous about. We never contact people who have lost money. Fraudsters revisit their victims, sometimes posing as recovery firms, sometimes as the bank or the police. If someone approaches you unprompted offering to get your money back, treat it as a scam and report it.
The problems that come up most
Drawn from the claims we actually run in this area, not from a generic list of consumer complaints.
Gross negligence asserted without evidence to support it
Vulnerability not identified, so protections that should apply are not applied
Generic warnings treated as specific advice about the actual scam
Claims described as a police matter rather than assessed under the rules
Recovery scams targeting people who have already lost money once
What clients in this sector achieve
These are the outcomes engagements in this sector are scoped to produce. They are written into the proposal so success is defined before the work starts, not assessed afterwards.
- Reimbursement obtained after an initial refusal for gross negligence
- Vulnerability evidenced so the exceptions could not properly be applied
- Interest recovered on money that was wrongly withheld
- Separate awards where handling caused real hardship
Where sector programmes usually start
APP Fraud Reimbursement
You were tricked into transferring money to a criminal. Since October 2024, most victims of authorised push payment fraud must be reimbursed.
Unauthorised Card Transactions
Payments you did not make and did not approve. The law puts the burden on your bank to prove otherwise, and most people do…
Duplicate and Incorrect Charges
Charged twice, charged the wrong amount, or charged in the wrong currency at a rate you never agreed.
Engagements in this sector
$19,400 reimbursed after a bank blamed the customer for an impersonation scam
The bank refused reimbursement for gross negligence. It had not identified that the customer was recently bereaved, had not asked, and its warning did not address the scam that actually…
- Total recovered including interest
- $22,330 Total recovered including interest
- Refusals overturned
- 2 Refusals overturned
- From referral to settlement
- 19 weeks From referral to settlement