Transfered £1750 into wrong bank account by mistake & now cant get it back !!

dasfergmeister · 11 April 2007 at 4:35PM

I really hope someone might be able to offer me some advice.....

A friend of mine has mistakenly transferred £1750 pounds into an unknown bank account whilst meaning to transfer it to a builder for some work that had been done on their house ....

This was almost a month ago & up to date, the only thing that my friend's bank has been able to do, is confirm by letter that the "lucky" recipient has indeed received the cleared funds :mad:

A letter has been written to the other party, from my friend's bank, requesting the funds back, but no reply or money has yet been received. Of course, my friend does not know the other account holder's details so cannot therefore contact them directly.

Does anyone happen to know where my friend stands legally, since neither bank seems willing to get their hands dirty & actually help sort out this mess.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

CarolnMalky · 11 April 2007 at 4:40PM

I am unsure where your friend stands legally...though I would think that it is her responsibility to double check account numbers, sortcodes and account holders name(this can only be done in branch).

The only other thing is for your friend to contact the other bank again...but I don't think there is much that can be done I'm afraid.

mpython · 11 April 2007 at 5:54PM

Your friend must have a record of which account it was actually paid to. No doubt the bank has a responsibility to ensure the confidentiality of all its customers but that doesn't mean mistakes can't be rectified. Write to the bank concerned explaining what went wrong and ask to make contact via them with the recipient. Thankfully most people are honest and will happily repay it. If you don't get any joy then your friend will have to think about legal action to retrieve the money from the account. It might be best to speak to CAB or a solicitor to work out the best way to achieve this as you'll get conflicting opinions on here. I'm pretty sure the recipient is guilty of theft by finding, but if they happen to be rich or a company and have lots of money going in & out of their account it may just be they haven't spotted this unusual paymentyet. As its under £3k, the small claims court may be one option. The small claims court could be a route to encourage the bank to provide the recipient's information as otherwise they'll be guilty of aiding & abetting.

Let us know how your friend gets on.

regularsaver1 · 11 April 2007 at 5:55PM

Can't your bank do a BACS re-call?

soolin · 11 April 2007 at 7:47PM

regularsaver1 wrote: »

Can't your bank do a BACS re-call?

Once a direct bank to bank payment has gone it's gone. That's why we ebay sellers love them so much, we know they can't be recalled at all later. As long as they show as cleared at close of business they are there for good.

It is quite possible that your friend has lost this money. He/she paid it across in good faith and so any legal attempt to get it back is unlikely to work as it would be a case of the sender making sure the recipent details were 100% correct.

The only time the bank might be liable is where the bank itself did the transfer either over the counter or by phone and where it is possible to argue that they mis typed the recipient details.

Soo

Sillychuckie · 11 April 2007 at 10:50PM

Surely this is a pretty common occurance across the world?
It seems mad that their isnt a better structured and well defined process for reclaiming these funds.
Such rubbish systems in place... 3/4 days to transfer and a process that relies on human judgement isn't well set up to cope with human error.
Boooo! I protest!

soolin · 11 April 2007 at 11:02PM

Sillychuckie wrote: »

Surely this is a pretty common occurance across the world?
It seems mad that their isnt a better structured and well defined process for reclaiming these funds.
Such rubbish systems in place... 3/4 days to transfer and a process that relies on human judgement isn't well set up to cope with human error.
Boooo! I protest!

Surely though this is better than being in a position where any money paid into your account can be grabbed back at the senders will days or even weeks later? It would mean that we could never guarantee that our cleared funds would still be there when we went to spend them. That refund from carphone warehouse...gone in a flash as they decided to reverse it, that payment from a friend to reimburse you for Glastonbury tickets..gone as they 've decided it was too expensive after all.

Mark7799 · 12 April 2007 at 8:52AM

There seem to be a few threads on this theme from both sides of the scenario here. Perhaps we can merge them all and the posters can explain to each other why 'they' are right.

digerati · 13 April 2007 at 3:11AM

Sillychuckie wrote: »

Surely this is a pretty common occurance across the world?

It's only a common occurrence in countries (like the UK) where bank accounts don't incorporate checksums and no real time match is made between the sort code, account number and account name.

By contrast international transfers using BIC + IBAN are impossible to send to the wrong account since each IBAN incorporates a check sum. Give one transposed digit (or character) and the transfer will be rejected by the sending bank.

Sillychuckie wrote: »

It seems mad that their isnt a better structured and well defined process for reclaiming these funds.

As for reclaiming funds sent to the wrong domestic bank account, they can be requested back, but only after getting authorization from the receiving account holder. Usually the terms under which UK bank transfers are made say that any mistakes by the sender are their responsibility. The onus is on the sender to confirm the details are correct. If the bank made the mistake then they will refund the sender promptly, and seek a reversal from the receiver.

dasfergmeister · 13 April 2007 at 10:52PM

Thanks everyone for all your comments. I have passed them on to my friend but as yet there is nothing more to report on him getting the money refunded. I will let you all know if anything changes & once again, thanks for all your comments

Transfered £1750 into wrong bank account by mistake & now cant get it back !!

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