Bank refusing to provide statements | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

I'm hesitant to respond to this thread as the "zkp" username makes me wonder if this might be a "spam bot" or, at the very least, one of those "prolific posters" you see on RedFlagDeals that I swear keep asking either the most basic of questions or weird "oddball" questions over and over and over just to, I don't know, get their "numbers" up and increase the number of search results associated with their member profile and, thereby, any associated website to said profile? 😉

That said, instead of "biting," I'll nibble, if you will.

When you say "over a year ago," you don't specify how long ago it was closed. Banks are only obligated to go back 7-10 years in many cases in terms of recordkeeping and you'll still be obliged to pay their duplicate statement fee per statement and, if they really want to "ding" you, they could probably even effectively "double charge you" by charging their standard "per hour" fee charged to research/look up specific transaction items, which could also apply to looking for copies of statements. This is typically $30-50 per hour, minimum 1-2 hours, and they can always "inflate" this much like I'm sure law firms do with their "billable hours" (i.e., if a person has to ask a colleague something on where to look, oh that's instantly two people times the number of total hours or two people times the first 2 hours, etc. or they could simply round up to the nearest hour with every 15 minute increment, that sort of thing). Expect to pay possibly hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, dollars for the statement reprints.

Also, are you requesting this remotely, via contact centre or e-mail? If so, they may require you to attend a branch and show your photo ID, especially if your address or phone number has changed from what they had on file, for security purposes.

Also, you say you've gone through all the channels of complaints, right up to the Ombudsman, is this to have members on this forum avoid suggesting escalating your complaint? Reason I ask is you don't state date(s), event(s), circumstance(s) or result(s) from each of those stages.

To properly assist you, what were the reason(s), at each stage, that BMO gave for dismissing your complaint?

Have you filed a police report for your stolen identity? What was the result? Did this affect other account(s) with other FI(s) and how did each handle it? If not, this seems kinda suspect that your "identity would be stolen," how and to what extent is not known, and would only affect fraudulent charges on one credit card. Also...why did you not report the fraudulent charges within 30 days of having received or normally have received your statement? If this was not reported until months, or even a year, later, you may, unfortunately, be out of luck, I'm sorry to say and, in that case, your resolution would be either through the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments and/or the civil court system. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Zkp said
…BMO right up to the ombudsman has refused to provide me with statements but keeps charging me huge interest. Any ideas on what I Candi to get the statements? Sue in court?  

The story seems incomplete and sounds bogus.

Credit card bills include details of the purchases. Are we to believe your credit card bills from BMO have just the amount owing and the due date?

As Doug asked, why weren't the transactions disputed within 30 days of the statement that they appeared on?

I suspect the full story is something like this:

Had a credit card with BMO. Over a year ago I suspected fraud and reported to BMO and they did nothing [because months had passed after the allegedly fraudulent transactions. As well, I could not point out specific transactions for them to investigate].

[Could not point out transactions as statements on which they appeared were discarded after they were blindly paid.] The bills went up and I wasn't using the card [because interest and collection fees were being charged on the balances I stopped paying].

Requested statements to see what was being bought and I was refused [because I refused to pay $5 per statement to reprint each past statement]. I stopped paying the bills because its obvious my identity has been stolen. BMO right up to the ombudsman has refused to provide me with statements [because I refuse to pay the $5/statement reprint fee for previous bills I received and paid months ago] but keeps charging me huge interest.

Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to "suspend" any new accounts; however, if they make more than one suspicious post, then that may warrant the suspension of posting privileges.

Alternatively, if it's not being done already, perhaps we could look at requiring posts from new members (i.e., one's first 10 posts) to be approved by the moderator? If the moderator comes across a suspicious post, they should send an e-mail message (in case they don't check their PMs) to the person who posted to find out the reason for the post to ascertain legitimacy. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug