A couple of months ago, the wife did a bank transfer of £203 (for MY Alps trip).
Turns out she got one of the numbers wrong so it went into the account of some random who clearly didn’t expect to have £203 put into their account. Flagged it with First Direct immediately. They go through a long-winded process of trying to recover the money from this bloke’s bank.
Found out just now we won’t get it back – to say I’m livid is a massive understatement 😈
How we can’t is beyond me. It’s our money transferred in error and flagged straight away.
Have First Direct given in too easily? I can’t get my head around it. I wouldn’t be bothered if it was a few quid but it’s a few hundred. Holiday just got £200 dearer!
Anyone had similar tales of woe and how was it resolved?

I think that if the recipient of the money refuses to allow the bank to recover the money, legally the bank can do nothing about it. However you can make a small claim courts claim against the recipient, which you will win.

have a word with the bank. they should help you take legal action.

http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/media_centre/press_releases/-/page/2867/

If funds cannot be recovered through the standard central process customers will be given clear and accurate information on the options they have available to them – such as court action against the recipient.

I guess it’s like posting cash through someone’s letter box, anyone can leave the money but you can’t get someone to break the door down and get it back if you stick it through the wrong box.

Actually I’m not very happy with that analogy but it’ll have to do.

If you asked the bank to make a payment and they did a typo and stuck it in the wrong account yes they should have asked the recipient for it and/or refunded it but if you gave them the wrong number…..

At the end of the day, your wife made the error and transferred the money to that person and gave him the money. The bank can’t just go in to that persons account and take the money back.

All they’ll do is send a letter to that person and ask him to transfer it back.

I would still kick off with First Direct and ask to make a complaint. This sort of story has been making the press quite a bit recently and it wouldn’t surprise me if new rules get put in place for it pretty soon.

Yep – I’ve just been told that by the wife who’s been in touch with the bank again after my reaction.
She feels awful but it’s easily done – the fact that this is allowed to happen is shocking.
The twunt who’s got the money refuses to acknowledge his bank’s inquiring.
Do you think we would win if we did a claim? It will cost £25 and our bank says there’s no guarantee is winning. If it was it would be a no-brainer. Want to pull this bloke’s arms off right now!

MSP has it right.

I’m afraid your bank has done nothing wrong – they transferred money as you instructed, at which point, for all intents and purposes, their role is complete. It relies on the recipients goodwill to get it back – thus it’s the recipient that is actually boiling urine, and I’d be fairly annoyed, too.

Edit: Jeez, I’m slow!

paypal gift anyone ?

Actually I’m not very happy with that analogy but it’ll have to do.

It’s a very good analogy. It’s like you putting cash in an envelope and addressing it wrong, and letting Royal Mail know as soon as the postie put it through the letterbox. They might knock on the door and ask for the letter back, but the person in the house doesn’t have to give it.

I suspect any attempt to get the recipients details from the bank are met by a flurry of ‘data protection says no’ responses too.

I think it’s more a problem with the new instant bacs – the old overnight stuff gave a few hours for the bank to reverse the transaction before it was irretrievable.

Personally, I’d take a punt on the extra £25 to try and get it back. If only to give the person who got it a bit of work to do if they want to block it.

Why do banks ask for the name of the recipient if it only goes by the sort and acc no’s provided?

I suspect any attempt to get the recipients details from the bank are met by a flurry of ‘data protection says no’ responses too.

and rightly so.

Why do banks ask for the name of the recipient if it only goes by the sort and acc no’s provided?

Because it makes customers feel better.

Do you think we would win if we did a claim? It will cost £25 and our bank says there’s no guarantee is winning. If it was it would be a no-brainer. Want to pull this bloke’s arms off right now!

IANAL, but I think there is some fairly strong case law to support you, “finders keepers” is not supported by law and if you are the recipient of someone else’s mistake you should make reasonable attempts to correct the mistake. iirc there have been people who having received large amounts of money by mistake and then gone on spending sprees have also then spent time in prison.

This kind of case won’t last IMO – online banking is increasing massively in use, which also increases the chance of customers making errors. Whilst the bank may be legally covered, there’s going to be thousands of complaints coming their way from angry customers who’ve made a simple error… which eventually will force a change in the banks’ approach.
Escalate it, tell them you’re going to shut your account and take ALL your business away from them if they don’t get the money back… that’ll cost them more than the £200 to just give you a goodwill refund.

Interestingly (or not), when I make a bank transfer in Hong Kong, the recipient’s name shows up when I put the account details in. The bank doesn’t ask me for the name, it shows me the name of the account-holder who I’m about to send the money to.

I find this quite reassuring. 🙂

Escalate it, tell them you’re going to shut your account and take ALL your business away from them if they don’t get the money back… that’ll cost them more than the £200 to just give you a goodwill refund.

Well, unless you’re taking large credit or o/d balances away, they probably won’t give a to$$ as they’re probably making a loss on your account.

See, what I don’t get about this is whenever I do a bank transfer I have to enter the name that the account is held in. I’d bet it’s a multi-million-to-1 chance that the account to which the £203 has been erroneously deposited has the same name as the one that should have received it. It’s exactly the same as me finding a £203 cheque made payable to A. N. Other on the street and the bank honouring it when I pay it into my account. Which wouldn’t happen.

The Flying ox – they don’t cross reference the sort code and account account and the recipient name when you do the transfer. You can put anything down. The ask for a recipient name so you know who you’ve transfered the money when you check your statement and so you know which bill payment to select next time.

whenever I do a bank transfer I have to enter the name that the account is held in

But the name isn’t used, it’s only really there so the bank can put “Payment to [name]” on your statement/transaction history.

Think about it, you want to make a payment to your friend John Smith. His account at, say, HSBC, could be in the name of ‘Mr John Smith’, ‘John Smith’, ‘Mr J Smith’, ‘John and Barbara Smith’ and you’d have to know and give exactly the right account name. The chances of that are slim.

Sort code and account number uniquely identify a single account, which is why they’re used (sometimes with a reference number for building society accounts)

What no one has answered. If the OP goes down the small claims route, would the bank supply him with the other parties details ?? If the won’t where would you go from there.

You’ll win in court – it’s a claim for monies paid under a mistake of fact. Case law is quite clear that the inadvertant recipient of money is under a duty to account for it.

However, whether the chap still has the money is another matter…

I would write to OP’s bank seeking disclosure of his details – if they cite “data protection” say you’re entitled to disclosure under s35 of the Data Protection Act and if they don’t pony up you’re entitled to seek what is known as a ‘Norwich Pharmacal’ order, or possibly even an application under the Banker’s Books Evidence Act 1879. 😉

As a trainee solicitor, I once had the task of sending the money to a bunch of people who’d just sold their company. I had been up all night, and the particular finance task involved filling out a large number of forms freehand (because our cashier was not going to deal with multiple transfers which were set out on a spreadsheet, that would have been excessively straightforward).

About GBP20million was moving I think.

Needless to say, one of the account numbers I scrawled on one of my forms in my sleep-deprived state was highly ambiguous, the cashier guessed it the wrong way and a few million quid disappeared into the banking system. It did not emerge for 4 days. The chap who was meant to be receiving the money called me several times from a Bentley dealership during those days. He was always civil, but quite upset.

🙂

If the OP goes down the small claims route, would the bank supply him with the other parties details ??

No, not without a court order.

If the won’t where would you go from there.

Keep pressing the bank to press the other bank to contact the customer to ask for the money back, but not have too much hope for getting the money back.

EDIT: Maybe I’m wrong, Jakester seems to know his stuff

I remember seeing something about this a while back – or it might have even been hearing about it on Radio 2 on the drive home. Can’t remember. Anyway….

I am sure they said that there is some identifier with credit cards that means the wrong numbers won’t work together; i.e. if you get one number wrong, there is some kind of ‘code’ in the number that recognises you’ve made a mistake.

With debit cards it is possible to do this, but it hasn’t been put in place. Whoever it was that was talking about it said that there is basically no reason why it can’t be implemented to provide protection for just this circumstance, but it hasn’t been.
They also said that no cross check is made of the name at all.

Escalate it, tell them you’re going to shut your account and take ALL your business away from them if they don’t get the money back… that’ll cost them more than the £200 to just give you a goodwill refund.

Seems a bit unreasonable to expect the bank to cover your losses when they acted according your instructions.

Read 87/04

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/87/87-banking-complaints.htm

And

code of practice

Do (the unwitting recipients) share your name?

I sent £600 by mistake to a guy on here a long time ago. I was buying a car and a pram and got the accounts mixed up (it was a crap car). Fortunately he understood and transferred the money back whilst I collected the pram!

Then the car blew up 15 minutes after collecting that…

Think about it, you want to make a payment to your friend John Smith. His account at, say, HSBC, could be in the name of ‘Mr John Smith’, ‘John Smith’, ‘Mr J Smith’, ‘John and Barbara Smith’ and you’d have to know and give exactly the right account name. The chances of that are slim.

You could pay a cheque made out to John Smith into any of those aaccounts. There is no reason way the same fuzzy logic name matching couldn’t be done with transfers to catch cases of mis-typed sort or account codes. The chances of the same/similar names on mis-typed accounts would surely be rather slim. Boarder line matches could be flagged for ‘human’ verification. The fact that the no name cross check is performed seems incredulous.

Though a name check wouldn’t help in the situation I had. Someone bought a van from me and transfered the money across. Months later they went to send someone a couple hundred quid and mistakenly selected me from their list of previous payees. So in the end there is no accounting for all human errors. However the bank could not tell me the account/sort codes to transfer the money back, only the name of the sender.

Seems a bit unreasonable to expect the bank to cover your losses when they acted according your instructions.[/I]

Exactly.

The lesson is; it’s your responsibility to make sure that the details you give are correct.

You could pay a cheque made out to John Smith into any of those aaccounts.

If there’s human involved in the process which with cheques I think there is. I would assume there are some privacy issues with this tho. If it’s the same bank then I assume the bank staff could look at the name on the account and the name you’ve give which may not be an exact match but a human (ie not a computer) would say yes that’s the right account – or atleast the right name. If it’s a different bank wouldn’t some account holders not want their names available to third parties? (would only be the other bank staff, but still)

Could be talking out of my bum tho.

OP, why is the bank liable for you sending the money to the wrong place ? If the other person/bank won’t return it why should First Direct be liable for your error ? It’s tough but why should the bank’s shareholders be out of pocket ?

I would keep pressing but a repayment will be a goodwill jesture rather than a legal obligation.

They might knock on the door and ask for the letter back, but the person in the house doesn’t have to give it

But if the person opened it and took the money they would be breaking the law for opening mail addressed to someone else (assuming the person has a different name).

opening mail addressed to someone else

if what the posters above say is correct about the lack of name checking and we’re stretching analogies, the envelope is addressed to “the occupant”

Read 87/04

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/87/87-banking-complaints.htm

See also 87/02 – bank mistakenly makes payment, demands money back, bank’s claim is upheld. One rule for banks, another for customers.

I suspect any attempt to get the recipients details from the bank are met by a flurry of ‘data protection says no’ responses too.

and rightly so.

There’s an exemption in the DPA (s35) where the information is required in connection with a court case.

If the bank refused, OP would have to obtain a Norwich Pharmacal order to force disclosure. This costs a bit but costs would probably be awarded against the bank.

DrJ – Member

See also 87/02 – bank mistakenly makes payment, demands money back, bank’s claim is upheld. One rule for banks, another for customers.

It does seem like a bit of this is going on, tbh.
Quite often on here, people pop up saying old employee mistakenly paid me another month’s salary, or Amazon have sent me 2 off an item, but I only ordered one and the general response is “they’ve made a mistake, pay/send it back”.

But here, a genuine mistake has caused the OP’s wife to send money to someone it shouldn’t have gone to. The banks are the device by which money is transferred and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that mistakes will be made. There should be a system in place to retrieve that money from the account that it went to.
Surely the receiver who is now sitting on £200 that they aren’t entitled to should be made to pay the money back, given that it’s not their money?

I really don’t know why we don’t use IBAN in the UK, it adds another level of checking so this sort of thing couldn’t easily happen by just transposing one digit.

I really don’t know why we don’t use IBAN in the UK, it adds another level of checking so this sort of thing couldn’t easily happen by just transposing one digit.

Amen to that. And maybe First Direct could enter the real world by allowing their customers to make online transfers using BIC/IBAN.

Ouch – unfortunate and expensive mistake!!
One (well two) question: How do you know it is a man, who won’t give it back? Could it be that it has been transferred to some dormant account or similar?
RM.