Keep an eye on your balances at Simplii | Page 3 | Simplii Financial | Discussion forum

iotama said
What I find interesting (and telling) is the fact that almost daily I receive mail from banks and FIs scaring me about taking "Fraud" seriously like I'm a child. When, to me, it's now abundantly clear that it's the banks that have more internal staffing rot that they FIRST need to spend resources and focus on.

Banks/FIs must be made to improve the responsibility, quality and training of the staff, as a regulatory requirement. Hiring for cheap, ultimately outsources security to the customers. It's unfair. All the 2FAs and security-code hell won't do a thing if the "call is coming from inside the house" per se!

As I've seen numerous times just on this forum alone (e.g. the Duca employee fraud earlier, and now this, etc), that banks are quick to offload their responsibility by hiding behind P.R. blitzes and gaslighting the customers instead of fulfilling their own fiduciary duties.

It shouldn't be upon good Samaritans like the folks here reporting and warning us all. This is not a charity/nonprofit industry we're talking about. It's the trillion dollar financial industry. And they have calculated that the victims are too small to fight back, etc. They should be made more responsible, and we need far more robust regulations and the media's eyes on them.  

Very well said iotama.

Simplii Financial initial response to me was that someone must have gotten ahold of my cheque book and used a cheque (it was cheque #1 which is funny in itself) when if they just took a second to look at the cheque they could see that the cheque was obviously fake. What doesn't help either is I was told by the CSR that I spoke with that they cannot view an image of the cheque on their end. So what good is that if someone like myself calls them regarding a fraudulent cheque.

"internal staffing rot that they FIRST need to spend resources and focus on". I couldn't agree with this statement any more. How are we supposed to
protect ourselves when Simplii Financial has an internal thief or multiple thieves taking shots due to the lack of accountability/consequences in this country.
In "magicman's" case, someone tried to write a cheque using on his Savings Account that doesn't even have cheques and he was still charged an NSF fee. I mean common, that is seriously laughable!

So I called Equifax on Monday about what happened to me where I got a letter from Simplii Financial about them doing a credit check on me because there was a credit limit increase request on my account and the CSR from Equifax couldn't even give me a Yes or No answer if Simplii Financial were the ones who
actually did this credit check on me. To make a long story short, all Equifax could do was flag my account so if another credit check is done on my account it would get flagged. So to sum it up, Simplii Financial said they never did this credit check on me and Equifax couldn't tell me who did this credit check on me. So I guess you can just do an anonymous credit check on anyone you see fit? I actually asked the CSR from Equifax if you can do that and he didn't know the answer to this question. I also had to provide my SIN over the phone with Equifax which I did not like either but what are you gonna do. I had to if I wanted any sort of resolution from this ordeal.

"It shouldn't be upon good Samaritans like the folks here reporting and warning us all." EXACTLY!

Just another reason why more and more people are getting in Bitcoin and becoming their own bank.

Norman1 said
Did Simplii share any details about how your name and corresponding Simplii chequing account number were leaked?

The Equifax credit record monitoring and $250 suggest that Simplii investigated and found something.

Credit checks are not anonymous. Credit bureaus do record who requested the check. Both hard and soft checks are included in the report to the consumer. The report to lenders only has the hard checks.  

They didn't share how my name and account were leaked. I don't think they exactly know how it was. When I asked the manager all he said was that it could have been an employee or former employee or something along those lines. It's all speculative.

How do you know for sure that Simplii "found something"? Well they know that I contacted Equifax about this matter. What do you mean by the "soft checks" and "hard checks"? When I spoke with Equifax in March they said that Simplii were the ones who did a credit check but when I spoke with a CSR at Simplii, the CSR said that nothing was showing up on their end as to anyone trying to do a credit check or credit limit increase from Simplii. Then again, I highly doubt those CSR's have much if any authority on what they can see on their end.

Like I stated before, I think an employee from Simplii (either acting alone or relaying this information to an outside accomplice) saw that I transferred funds from another financial institution and took a shot at trying to write a cheque (a very shoddy cheque at that) to withdraw these funds. Anyways, they were super slow on the trigger as I moved these funds from my Simplii Financial Chequing Account to my Simplii Financial High Interest Savings Account fairly quickly. At the end of the day, someone took a shot and whiffed completely.

I'm just sharing my experience with Simplii when I transferred funds there for the 5.50% promotional interest rate in February. I signed up for the free two years of credit monitoring with Equifax that Simplii has offered me and as soon as the $250 hit my account I moved it out immediately and currently have a $0.00 across all accounts there. What else am I supposed to do, hold Simplii ransom for more money/information?? I'm sure this kind of stuff happens every day at financial institutions all across the country and of course they're trying their best to keep it on the DL.

Loonie said
You ask what you're supposed to do in regards to Simplii. My answer would be, "negotiate".

As savemore pointed out, compensation of 250 is a tacit admission that Simplii failed you. A manager has suggested the problem could have been one of their employees! This is not small stuff. It's a serious issue, a criminal issue.

You have no assurance or confidence that it won't happen again, and neither does any other customer.

It may be too late now, but I would have negotiated for more compensation. I have always found that when the bank is in error, they can be bargained up.

I would really want to know what they are doing to track down the culprit, what they are doing to prevent further instances, and whether the police are involved. If not, why not? Fraud is a crime.
Don't assume this is a commonplace occurrence and therefore somehow not worth pursuing.

But it's up to you if you want to pursue it further or not. You may not get any satisfactory answers, but I would ask them, 'Why should I or any of my friends continue to do business with you?".  

I didn't even think of making an attempt to negotiate at the time. I think it's too late now anyways. I was sort of caught off guard with the call as this happened in February and since then I have closed that Chequing Account and opened a new one.

I know it's a serious crime and those were my exact thoughts at the time that this happened in February. I remember even bringing that up to the CSR that I spoke with from Simplii. The fact is though Canada's laws aren't strict and are way too laid back which is why criminals out there will take this shots even employee's that work for a bank or FI. It won't happen again since I won't be depositing there again.

I will follow up with those questions just to see what kind of answers I get. I can tell you now, I won't get any satisfactory answer and I'd bet that nothing was pursued criminally.

"Why should I or any of my friends continue to do business with you?" Great question. I am going to follow up next week or fairly soon with those questions and this question will be at the top of the list along with have the Police become involved and if they aren't investigating, why not.