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Stuff/Stuff
Text phishing scams are common.
Newsable is brought to you by BNZ.
As you might’ve noticed, scams are a pretty hot-button issue just now.
They’re everywhere – emails, phone calls, texts – and they’re getting more and more sophisticated.
The age of the Nigerian prince isn’t over. The tactics have just been refined.
And amongst the medley of reasons to be diligent is that if you do fall victim to a scam, your bank isn’t necessarily going to pay back the money you lost.
“The simplest way of thinking about it is when a transaction is authorised or it’s not authorised,” says Jon Duffy from Consumer NZ.
“Imagine an unauthorised transaction is where you leave your wallet on the bus or the train, someone picks it up, gets online with your credit card and makes a transaction.
“You haven’t authorised that transaction … and so in those cases, all things going well, the bank should refund you.
“(But) imagine you’re a scam victim, you’ve been lured into making a payment on some pretence.
“Because you’ve been scammed, you think it’s genuine and so you’ve authorised a payment to that person – and obviously that person’s not what they are claiming to be – but in those cases, the bank doesn’t need to refund you under our current banking code of practice.”
Duffy says while this might seem unfair, it’s partly a consequence of consumer demands.
People want their banks to process transactions faster. More checks and balances might be safer, but it can also make these transactions slower and less efficient.
If you get scammed and your bank refuses to pay out, you can escalate things up to the Banking Ombudsman, but there’s no guarantee they’ll rule in your favour.
Duffy also notes other countries have more tools to fight in the customer’s corner: he says the UK and Australia have more liberal rules, while Singapore’s police force has its own dedicated anti-scam centre.
Ultimately, Duffy says, there are strong elements of personal responsibility at play: it’s your money, so you have to be careful about who you authorise to access it.
“There needs to be a degree of personal responsibility. But we should remember people are being scammed by professional scammers. This is what these people do for a living. They’re very good at it. And we shouldn’t be blaming victims for being scammed unless they’ve done something out of the ordinary to contribute to exacerbating the harm that’s created.”
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