winscape 2380

As I say, you need better legislation. If you do an oops, here you have three days grace time, and then you pay interes. Not paying that interest IS a crime in itself.

For such relatively minor matters that each consumer would more or less ignore it is important to have someone capable to go after the culprits. It may take years, yes. But it all comes out of the pockets of the culprits in the end.

You have three years to file a claim if it is a fraudulent commercial transaction; 10 if it is theft-burglary, and forever if it involves weapons or violence. I don't think this is very different elsewhere.

Oh, yes, you have the "pull" system of payments. That means the intermediary have an excuse to sit on the money, because the one holding the money is not the one choosing the payment path it is going to take. With the push system (giro, not cheqhue) the person holding the money is the one to choose the path to deposint it through. That makes for a much more alert pathway.

We were through that phase in the mid to late eighties, and several financial insbreastutions were judged responsible for large customer losses through negligence; using laughable security. There were several jail sentences imposed on the financial community, and customer reimbursements large enough to break a few banks. That made them wake up. In less than 6 months the laughable security was gone.

All debit and credit cards now have IDs on the reverse. Network access is reasonably secure. etc etc. The financial community had to learn the hard way.

It was the same in Britain, in the "pink panther" cleanup before 1990, but they acted in time.

It sounds as banks still have to learn this the hard way.

-- mrr