HSBC have "misplaced" £240 of my money!!

omen666

James is right here or alternatively a Faster payments transfer

MajorTom_2

I know the bank won't want to admit they're at fault but wouldn't they have insurance against this type of error anyway?

jonesMUFCforever

MajorTom wrote: »

I know the bank won't want to admit they're at fault but wouldn't they have insurance against this type of error anyway?

What kind of insurance would that be?

MajorTom_2

Some form of indemnity insurance, there is a human element to banks so mistakes will be made (possibly in this case too) so they must be able to cover this kind of thing?

jonesMUFCforever

MajorTom wrote: »

Some form of indemnity insurance, there is a human element to banks so mistakes will be made (possibly in this case too) so they must be able to cover this kind of thing?

No insurance - its called a loss - but of course if the money was not counted by OP before it went into sealed envelope he will stand virtually no chance of getting the money back from the bank.

skintdragon

Sorry to hear about your shortage!

I wondered, besides manually counting the notes, the teller actually used the weighing machine to "weigh" the notes? With that amount of cash, you'd think they'd check it at least twice, with a witness?

Good luck and hope the outcome is a good one :j

jambosans

skintdragon wrote: »

I wondered, besides manually counting the notes, the teller actually used the weighing machine to "weigh" the notes? With that amount of cash, you'd think they'd check it at least twice, with a witness?

Now lack of branch usage/ knowledge may account for this, but do branches weigh notes? (Incidentally I'm not sure what you mean when putting weigh in inverted commas). My initial thought is no, and that surely the difference in weight between a £10 note and £20 note is negligible? If you meant "weigh" as in, use an "automated note counting machine", the OP did state it was only an advisor, not a cashier - it's therefore safe to assume the tills were inoperable.

To address the OP directly, as everyone else has said, it's a difficult situation. I'd assume the advisor acted out-with their role/ authority in writing and signing a receipt after receiving funds counted by yourself and a 3rd party. No doubt this advisor is in trouble (hence having a sit-down with yourself and the branch manager), however, quite simply, mistakes do happen.

The money was not deposited into the account, therefore it had to be verified before doing so. I agree the advisor should have counted the entire amount, but I doubt HSBC will except liability for this £240 discrepancy on the basis of this simple mistake. With other banks, if you deposit money via ATM envelope you enter an amount which is printed on your receipt, however the money is counted and verified before being allowed to clear into the account. The receipt is merely the amount you wish to deposit, the advisor did not actually verify the whole amount (as it was counted by two non-HSBC staff members).

rb10

jambosans wrote: »

Now lack of branch usage/ knowledge may account for this, but do branches weigh notes? (Incidentally I'm not sure what you mean when putting weigh in inverted commas). My initial thought is no, and that surely the difference in weight between a £10 note and £20 note is negligible?

Yes, they do, provided that all the notes are of the same denomination.

It's not about taking the difference in weight between a £10 note and a £20 note - it's about being able to tell you how many £20 notes are in a pile that you weigh. And the accurate scales that the banks have can tell you the exact number of notes that you have.

I would not rely on this as the only means of counting the money - although I have never known them to be wrong - but it's certainly good as verification.

(In fact, they can also tell the difference in weight between £10 and £20 notes. If you put a pile of £20 notes, with a £10 note hidden somewhere in the middle, then the machine will report an error, as the weight is not an exact multiple of £20 notes.)

Lokolo

I am used to working with vast amounts of moneys in a job I used to do.

We would manually count up in thousands, then weigh to confirm. When manually, we would also have 2 people count.

I have never known the scales to be wrong.

74jax

jambosans wrote: »

Now lack of branch usage/ knowledge may account for this, but do branches weigh notes? (Incidentally I'm not sure what you mean when putting weigh in inverted commas). My initial thought is no, and that surely the difference in weight between a £10 note and £20 note is negligible? If you meant "weigh" as in, use an "automated note counting machine", the OP did state it was only an advisor, not a cashier - it's therefore safe to assume the tills were inoperable.

Anything over 1k and I had to have this duel counted. We also had a note counter and also a note weighing machine - quicker than the counter.