Not upheld: scam claim and refund request complaint against National Westminster Bank Public Limited Company

Decision detail

Summary

Ms T paid £200 as a deposit for a kitten in October 2023 but later had second thoughts and the sale was not completed. She subsequently reported the payment as a scam and requested a refund from NatWest. NatWest investigated and determined it was a civil dispute rather than a scam, declining to refund the payment. The ombudsman upheld NatWest's decision, finding that the seller appeared to be a legitimate, licensed business and that both parties intended the payment to be for a kitten purchase, making this a civil dispute over goods quality rather than a scam as defined by the CRM code.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the CRM code definition of a scam, which requires that the customer transferred funds for what they believed were legitimate purposes but were in fact fraudulent, and that the seller's intended purpose differed from the customer's. The ombudsman found that both Ms T and the seller intended the payment to be for the purchase of a kitten, and that the seller appeared to be a legitimate business based on licensing, website listing, lack of other scam reports, and account activity patterns. The ombudsman concluded that the dispute about the kitten's quality resembled a civil dispute over goods quality, which is specifically excluded from the CRM code definition of a scam.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website