Lloyds tsb lost my money

MillieCat

Firstly I apologise for the long post but as this has been going on since June last year there is quite a lot to tell!

On 9th June I went to my bank HSBC armed with that months bills and the correct cash to pay them. One of these bills was my Lloyds TSB credit card which I paid £190. On the 19th June I received a letter from Lloyd’s collection centre saying I was in arrears, I thought this was a little odd but just presumed the funds hadn’t cleared yet. I checked my balance on the 26th June and the funds still hadn’t appeared so I phoned Lloyds to ask what was going on, they said they had never received my payment and HSBC must have lost it. I phoned HSBC who confirmed the payment had been made and had gone through to Lloyds, it was Lloyds who had lost the money, HSBC sent me a confirmation of this in writing and a copy of my payment slip to send to Lloyds. I phoned Lloyds with this information and sent them a letter and a copy of the details from HSBC, I was told to wait 28 days for them to look into the matter. 28 days came and went I phoned them and wrote to them numerous times as on each statement I received interest and charges were being added to my account.

In October I phoned again and told them I refused to pay another penny until they found the missing funds, surprisingly this was agreed to and I was assured all interest and charges would be refunded as soon as they found the money. In December I received a letter from MHA Lloyds collections department demanding immediate settlement of the arrears (according to them the missing £190 plus £500) I explained to them what was going on and they went through my file and there was absolutely no mention of the missing money or the investigations. She suggested I put it all in writing and send it again but in the mean time to enter into a payment plan of £72 a month which I agreed to.

I'm self employed and November, December and January have been very hard on me, all my savings are gone and I had no money coming in at all, so as well as writing to all my creditors to explain the situation and offer them pro rata payments I wrote to Lloyds practically begging for my £190 I know its not a lot but at the moment it is too me. I sent the letter along with copies of the original proof from HSBC that the money had been paid to both MHA and Lloyds on 1st Feb and received several letters back telling me they were taking it very seriously and promised to find the money.

This morning I received this letter:

Dear Miss xxxxxxx

Thank you for your query about your payment of £190 which was not credited to your credit card.

I am unable to help you in tracing the payment from here. You will need to speak to the bank branch where you made the payment. Please tell them the date and amount you paid and if you paid by cash or cheque. They will also need to see any proof of the payment and will then be able to search for your payment. When this is found, your account will be credited.

Yours Sincerely

Catherine Harvey

Are they actually taking the pi$$? Did she even read my letter? I did this last June and have sent them the proof at least 4 times plus god only knows how many phone calls. Other than writing off the £190 what is my next step to get this money back?

If you’ve managed to get to the end of this post thank you! Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

JasX

MillieCat wrote: »

In October I phoned again and told them I refused to pay another penny until they found the missing funds, surprisingly this was agreed to and I was assured all interest and charges would be refunded as soon as they found the money.

Not really suprising, thats the minimum I'd expect.

MillieCat wrote: »

but in the mean time to enter into a payment plan of £72 a month which I agreed to.

Definitely a significant error on your part, if you're not paying, with their permission and have sent them full evidence of the missing payment they'll be looking for it. If you're easily fobbed off and start paying again anyway and I was in their shoes I'd be not bothering with the missing payment, assume you were pulling a fast one and forget about looking for the missing money, why would anyone who didn't owe the arrears and charges and had had the account frozen suddely give up and start paying?



Regards the last part, write to them again, send them full proof (again) of the missing payment and make it clear its a complaint and you're questioning their competence of beign able to track it down seeing its taken them x months of having had copies of all the slips etc necessary to trace it and all they can come up with is an innane request for you to send them slips or something or other for a fifth time.

Insist they freeze the account until they've found the missing money (ideally putting it in writing), refuse to pay anything or speak to anyone on the phone beyond referring them to the ongoing investigation. Demand they refund any charges incurred as a result of them losing the payment and failing to find it for N months and insist they send you a full statement showing these have been credited, Demand further compensation for your time and hassle sending them the same materials 5 times and spending x hours on the phone trying to get them to sort this out (and talking to their collection agents) also might be worth chipping in their incopetence is being recounted blow by blow on this website site and they're not painting a very good picture of the levels of customer service they offer

dancingfairy

I would send them an official complaint and tell them you want it resolved asap. If they can't find it/fob you off then you can refer your complaint to the ombudsman - this is not a quick fix unfortunately as i think it takes a while for them to investigate but hopefully they can wade in and get it sorted for you and may be able to award compensation
Or you can try one of the newspaper 'investigation' columns.
good luck
df

GeorgeUK

Millie, write an official letter of complaint to the head office detailing what has happened and what you have done to try to resolve the issue - try to give a timeline if possible.

If they do not reply with a satisfactory reply within a month, report them to the FSA.

beanielou

Doesent sur[prise me Im afraid.

Woowoo

I HATE LLOYDS TSB WITH AN ABSOLUTE PASSION.

Not a very helpful post I know but they really do make my blood boil!

JasX

Woowoo wrote: »

I HATE LLOYDS TSB WITH AN ABSOLUTE PASSION.

I like LloydsTSB

They're so disorganised it took them 6 years to notice I was no longer a 'recent' graduate and had had my £2000 interest free overdraft for far too long... plus they'd forgotten to start charging me the £10 gold account fee for the last 3 years of that to boot.

Eventually they wrote to me saying they'd noticed, were taking my free stuff away and would like to start charging me the £10 per month....

I wrote back thanking them for their letter and requesting they close the account

DVardysShadow

When this sort of thing happens, if it is not resolved at the first time of phoning, you need to write a letter and keep a copy. That way, it is easier to write the first letter and as it goes on, you can just send another letter which refers to the previous one and attach a copy. If you do that, you have a paper trail which makes your position much stronger if they start giving you a hard time.

Too late for you, MillieCat, but maybe it will help someone.

kaz0705

I was in a very similar situation. My friend owed me money from a deposit and did it by bank transfer from Lloyds to HSBC but it hadnt arrived after a week.

We went back and forth and had all the same problems you're having, with each bank saying we needed to speak to the other.

In the end, she gave her Lloyds manager permission to discuss it with me and we found the problem within 10 seconds; she'd mixed up the sort code.

Unfortunately in situations like this, you're looking at the receipt and reading the payment details back and its easy to not notice that, say, the 1 and 0 are round the wrong way.

I would go back and double check what the Lloyds account *should* have been and what it *was* paid to. I am confident (fingers crossed for you!) that it's down to an admin error.

The worst thing for my friend was, even though we discovered the problem and £300 was paid into some other random's account, HSBC refused to take it back as it had gone on for so long! Unbelievable!

Good luck!

cupc4kes

Like previous poster has said I would double check the sortcode acc number and also the reference number because it could be in someone elses account and to be honest whose gonna own up to having £190 in their credit card acc or it could just be in a suspense account.Just to add as well if you do send another letter send it by special delivery so someone has to sign for it.