UK deposit to order checkout to delivery process

[Superman]

Just a forewarning that the cash purchase payment process Lotus have in place is not ideal in the slightest and to be honest it’s all a bit shady and feels risky. Spent all day convincing the bank it wasn’t a scam and in the end having to convince myself and triple check with lotus it wasn’t a scam with a hijacked email replaced with someone else bank account details. You get emailed an invoice from a new lotus email address (went into my spam). On the invoice you are assigned with essentially a random sort code and account number you are told is specific to your payment only-for the purpose of keeping lotus’ account details out of the public domain. Chaps payments are also not accepted at the moment. When I went to pay it, the name does not match the account. So I paid £1 and asked customer services to confirm they receive it before I send a further £75,000 into the abyss. They got the £1 according ti the live chat, i phone the bank (nationwide) and tell them I'm making a large payment via fast transactions (£10k at a time and take up to 2hours) they said I can make as many as I want and if it does throw up an issue they will ring me. 30mins later I get a call from a random mobile number - not the bank but a guy who said he works for Lotus and wondering when i’m making payment, essentially chasing the payment and to let me know when they receive the money. Fast forward 2 hours and the bank phones me to discuss suspicious activity on my account - fair enough. A series of questions later from nationwide fraud team and advice about people intercepting and hijacking emails and replacing with their own account details - I’m hearing myself talk out loud about a random new email address and a random mobile phone number popping up today with an invoice with an account and sort code the bank can’t match to Lotus and a car registration number they can’t find and match to the lotus and usually can at this stage… i’m being ask to commit to the payment at high risk in their eyes after a few hours of back and forth my bank aren’t 100% on it but are happy to pay if I accept liability that it could be a scam and gamble on £75k… not exactly the secure and guarantee my money is going to the correct place I wanted really and all a bit stressful. The random mobile number is a senior finance staff member and customer services online live chat confirmed it is his mobile number. After payment I received an email with receipt of payment attached and hopefully I have paid for a car. - Jessica from customer services was super helpful throughout it’s not just been me with this - Lotus need to find a more convincing way of dealing with the payment

Terrible situation for Lotus to put you (or any customer) in... Pretty sure I wouldn't have agreed to let the payments go through myself until Lotus sorted out a secure payment method that the bank fraud dept. were happy with.

 

[JimH]

My bank only allows £10k max in total per day using the faster payments system, regardless of number of transactions or payees. Hopefully they’ll wait 8 days after invoice or accept CHAPS by then or I’ll be driving to Hethel with a bankers draft……..

 

[donskibeat]

Still waiting for my invoice, but sounds like this final stage is going to be stressful! what bank are you with @JimH that only allows £10k a day? hope mine isn't like that.

 

[JimH]

Still waiting for my invoice, but sounds like this final stage is going to be stressful! what bank are you with @JimH that only allows £10k a day? hope mine isn't like that.

RBS One Account (formerly Virgin One Account) Probably an extreme case as it’s a “legacy product” but there’s a useful list here :

StackPath

 

[emiralust]

I paid my invoice a couple of weeks ago from a Barclays account and the faster payments process. I believe that the sort code is the same for everyone but the account number is different for each payee, to hide the Lotus account identity. I also paid £1 at first then checked via a phone call to LCC that it had been received. Barclays did the normal scam checks but allowed the payment. The next two days I paid the remainder, checking each time by phone that it had been received. Barclays again did the scam checks. It was as easy as that with none of the drama you describe. It may be that your bank is at fault rather than Lotus.

I think you’ve missed the point i’m making though, the process Lotus set up should not look so shady. It should also not have any risk involved in it. ie, a new random mobile phone number and email instead of the customer service number we know is them. Or even just a bank account that can be verified as them..? Pretty basic stuff. I could have written that process down and ended my message that it was a scam and it would have been believable that’s a problem when you’re transferring £75k

 

[PaperLawyer]

I bank with Barclays and Premier account holders can only pay third parties £50k (unless through branch). So there will be some faff of two payments over two days unless Lotus offer a £25k discount for prompt payment!

Totally agree that the bigger issue is that the approach to payment is triggering fraud alerts. I can imagine my wife will ask me to drive to Hethel and demand Matt sits in front of me to confirm bank details as I make the transaction!

 

[Swaff1958]

Just a forewarning that the cash purchase payment process Lotus have in place is not ideal in the slightest and to be honest it’s all a bit shady and feels risky. Spent all day convincing the bank it wasn’t a scam and in the end having to convince myself and triple check with lotus it wasn’t a scam with a hijacked email replaced with someone else bank account details. You get emailed an invoice from a new lotus email address (went into my spam). On the invoice you are assigned with essentially a random sort code and account number you are told is specific to your payment only-for the purpose of keeping lotus’ account details out of the public domain. Chaps payments are also not accepted at the moment. When I went to pay it, the name does not match the account. So I paid £1 and asked customer services to confirm they receive it before I send a further £75,000 into the abyss. They got the £1 according ti the live chat, i phone the bank (nationwide) and tell them I'm making a large payment via fast transactions (£10k at a time and take up to 2hours) they said I can make as many as I want and if it does throw up an issue they will ring me. 30mins later I get a call from a random mobile number - not the bank but a guy who said he works for Lotus and wondering when i’m making payment, essentially chasing the payment and to let me know when they receive the money. Fast forward 2 hours and the bank phones me to discuss suspicious activity on my account - fair enough. A series of questions later from nationwide fraud team and advice about people intercepting and hijacking emails and replacing with their own account details - I’m hearing myself talk out loud about a random new email address and a random mobile phone number popping up today with an invoice with an account and sort code the bank can’t match to Lotus and a car registration number they can’t find and match to the lotus and usually can at this stage… i’m being ask to commit to the payment at high risk in their eyes after a few hours of back and forth my bank aren’t 100% on it but are happy to pay if I accept liability that it could be a scam and gamble on £75k… not exactly the secure and guarantee my money is going to the correct place I wanted really and all a bit stressful. The random mobile number is a senior finance staff member and customer services online live chat confirmed it is his mobile number. After payment I received an email with receipt of payment attached and hopefully I have paid for a car. - Jessica from customer services was super helpful throughout it’s not just been me with this - Lotus need to find a more convincing way of dealing with the payment

That is a sorry state of affairs- I think I’ll send them a cheque!

 

[Wolfram]

I paid my invoice a couple of weeks ago from a Barclays account and the faster payments process. I believe that the sort code is the same for everyone but the account number is different for each payee, to hide the Lotus account identity. I also paid £1 at first then checked via a phone call to LCC that it had been received. Barclays did the normal scam checks but allowed the payment. The next two days I paid the remainder, checking each time by phone that it had been received. Barclays again did the scam checks. It was as easy as that with none of the drama you describe. It may be that your bank is at fault rather than Lotus.

Why on Earth would any legitimate company need or want to hide their account identity? This is dodgy af - what a brilliant way for Lotus to destroy trust and open themselves and their customers up to fraud and scammers. I have never heard of anything like this, and I for one would not make any payment of this size to an unknown bank account with no company name verification - the banks are completely justified in saying these transactions are entirely at your own risk. What is the actual name on the account then, if it is not Lotus? Who are you actually paying?

What bank allows a company to open thousands of accounts like this to accept a single payment? What happens to the account afterwards? Lotus (or whoever you have actually paid) transfers the money out of it then closes the account so there can be no repercussions? Sounds a lot like a push fraud to me...

 

[Evotion]

Calm down you lot! There is no need to mention the word 'f r a u d' when dealing with Lotus. That helps nobody. The issue is the system itself. Another thing that Lotus seem to have messed up.

I will be in the boat next, Got the money ready but transferring could be an issue.
Previously, with large amounts, I send my money to my missus and she pays, as she has a 'better' bank account.

I will contact my bank and ask them, in advance, what is the best solution to expedite the payment.

 

[Tonyshepp]

I just bought my non Lotus - given account sort code , account number and name on the account - hey presto bank app validated account details - confidence restored.

Who does Lotus think is going to hack its bank account, China ??

 

[JimH]

Why on Earth would any legitimate company need or want to hide their account identity? This is dodgy af - what a brilliant way for Lotus to destroy trust and open themselves and their customers up to fraud and scammers. I have never heard of anything like this, and I for one would not make any payment of this size to an unknown bank account with no company name verification - the banks are completely justified in saying these transactions are entirely at your own risk. What is the actual name on the account then, if it is not Lotus? Who are you actually paying?

What bank allows a company to open thousands of accounts like this to accept a single payment? What happens to the account afterwards? Lotus (or whoever you have actually paid) transfers the money out of it then closes the account so there can be no repercussions? Sounds a lot like a push fraud to me...

There's some background to the service probably used here :

Bank transfer payments

Learn about bank transfers and managing payments with the customer balance.

stripe.com

Credit transfers (Sources)

Learn about bank transfers with Stripe.

stripe.com

 

[Hobiedick]

Why on Earth would any legitimate company need or want to hide their account identity? This is dodgy af - what a brilliant way for Lotus to destroy trust and open themselves and their customers up to fraud and scammers. I have never heard of anything like this, and I for one would not make any payment of this size to an unknown bank account with no company name verification - the banks are completely justified in saying these transactions are entirely at your own risk. What is the actual name on the account then, if it is not Lotus? Who are you actually paying?

What bank allows a company to open thousands of accounts like this to accept a single payment? What happens to the account afterwards? Lotus (or whoever you have actually paid) transfers the money out of it then closes the account so there can be no repercussions? Sounds a lot like a push fraud to me...

I think the problem is the payment goes through a third party which is STRIPE (which is really TRIPE).

 

[Mistral]

I think you’ve missed the point i’m making though, the process Lotus set up should not look so shady. It should also not have any risk involved in it. ie, a new random mobile phone number and email instead of the customer service number we know is them. Or even just a bank account that can be verified as them..? Pretty basic stuff. I could have written that process down and ended my message that it was a scam and it would have been believable that’s a problem when you’re transferring £75k

I don't think I've missed your point. If 130 people in the UK have taken delivery or are about to, they've gone through this process. As far as I can recall, you are only the second person to query the process on this forum. Everyone else seems to have managed. Yes, of course, you should absolutely ensure that your payment is being made to the correct account and has been received. We're talking about a huge sum of money. But pretty much everyone else has managed to do that.

 

[scoates]

A potential good way to ensure it's going the the right place and not a scam could be to send a random small amount e.g. £5.47, then directly contact Customer Care through the links on the website, not replying to any other emails, and get them to confirm back to you the amount received. That way you know you're contacting the correct people and if they tell you the amount with no previous prompting you know the exact amount was received in the right place.

 

[Mistral]

A potential good way to ensure it's going the the right place and not a scam could be to send a random small amount e.g. £5.47, then directly contact Customer Care through the links on the website, not replying to any other emails, and get them to confirm back to you the amount received. That way you know you're contacting the correct people and if they tell you the amount with no previous prompting you know the exact amount was received in the right place.

Which is what I did, but with a nominal £1 and I phoned LCC for that and subsequent amounts rather than rely on web chat.

 

[Wolfram]

... Or you could just send the whole amount to a proper bank account with the anti-fraud account name matching system the banks rolled out specifically to promote trust, guard against fraud and greatly reduce the risk of incorrectly-entered bank account details...

 

[emiralust]

I think we should move on. I’ve explained the process and everyone who reads it will have an extra heads up to be aware and extra diligent when the time comes. Good luck everyone

 

[Mistral]

I think we should move on. I’ve explained the process and everyone who reads it will have an extra heads up to be aware and extra diligent when the time comes. Good luck everyone

OK. I don't disagree with what you're saying. The process should be more straightforward and transparent, but it worked OK for me.

 

[Toomanyloti]

I bank with Barclays and Premier account holders can only pay third parties £50k (unless through branch). So there will be some faff of two payments over two days unless Lotus offer a £25k discount for prompt payment!

Totally agree that the bigger issue is that the approach to payment is triggering fraud alerts. I can imagine my wife will ask me to drive to Hethel and demand Matt sits in front of me to confirm bank details as I make the transaction!

I'm same account i think (Black Card) and its defo 2 x lots of £50k/day using app = £100k max

 

[Hobiedick]

I confirmed my order on the checkout process the 21st November 2022, my number plate retention 22nd and ID check 23rd, on the 25th LCS confirmed car was at PDI Upper Heyford, some 9 weeks on from process start no delivery date or explanation as to why. Everytime I ring them they say I will be contacted sooooooon, the car must be faulty as who would sit on £80k worth of goods if they are fit for purpose to a customer!!!!