Internet Banking payment to wrong account number

markums

Having had a big fright last night through to this morning i thought i would write my experience of this down for anyone else who has the same problem, as there is not alot of advice out there.

From my Santander internet banking i tried to transfer £925 to my Halifax account using account number and sort code. Only after four working days and the money not turning up i found i had reversed the sixth and seventh digits of the recipient account number.

I rang Santander through their many push button menus and eventually (13 minutes) spoke to a very hepful advisor that i should go to a branch of Halifax and ask whether or not the wrong account number existed or not - i.e. had someone else received my cash.

Even if the account did exist, they couldn't have given me any details of the account holder (data protection act etc), but they confirmed that they could have told me whether or not the mystery account holder had received the cash. They could also have put a note on the account about the mystery cash so if the lucky guy queried it, he would have been told.

In my case, as the account number didn't exist, the money is going to be held in some vast cash resevoir of Halifax and returned in "up to 10 working days" to my Santander account. If you think about it, the odds are good for the account not existing as one sort code doesn't normally have 99999999 accounts linked to it.

I'm just glad no-one else is going to withdraw the cash and spend it all, as my legal position would not have been very strong, from what i had read about similar cases on the internet.

Therefore this post doesnt require much answering, it's purely to help the other idiots like me out there googling the problem.

Three new golden rules:

• Check, check and check again ALL the details.
• Transfer £0.01 first as a test.
• Don't be such an idiot.

:money:

MarkFromCornwall

markums wrote: »

Having had a big fright last night through to this morning i thought i would write my experience of this down for anyone else who has the same problem, as there is not alot of advice out there.

From my Santander internet banking i tried to transfer £925 to my Halifax account using account number and sort code. Only after four working days and the money not turning up i found i had reversed the sixth and seventh digits of the recipient account number.

I rang Santander through their many push button menus and eventually (13 minutes) spoke to a very hepful advisor that i should go to a branch of Halifax and ask whether or not the wrong account number existed or not - i.e. had someone else received my cash.

Even if the account did exist, they couldn't have given me any details of the account holder (data protection act etc), but they confirmed that they could have told me whether or not the mystery account holder had received the cash. They could also have put a note on the account about the mystery cash so if the lucky guy queried it, he would have been told.

In my case, as the account number didn't exist, the money is going to be held in some vast cash resevoir of Halifax and returned in "up to 10 working days" to my Santander account. If you think about it, the odds are good for the account not existing as one sort code doesn't normally have 99999999 accounts linked to it.

I'm just glad no-one else is going to withdraw the cash and spend it all, as my legal position would not have been very strong, from what i had read about similar cases on the internet.

Therefore this post doesnt require much answering, it's purely to help the other idiots like me out there googling the problem.

Three new golden rules:

• Check, check and check again ALL the details.
• Transfer £0.01 first as a test.
• Don't be such an idiot.

:money:

Thanks for the warning... and it's great that you aren't blaming anybody else for the problem. I do hope you get your money back soon as I know how worrying these things are.

Mark

Milarky

Moneybox covered this last week, I think. Much mirth was made of the fact that you are often 'required' to provide a reference (eg the name of the payee) but there is 'no means of checking' against this when an automated payment is made.

Going through my First Direct payees a while back I wanted to clear out the unused ones. FD said these can't be removed (technical limitations) but they could put 'DO NOT USE' as the payee. Now I've since tried to make a 'DO NOT USE' payment from FD and - you guessed it - it makes absolutlely no difference and the payments go as normal..

rb10

markums wrote: »

In my case, as the account number didn't exist, the money is going to be held in some vast cash resevoir of Halifax and returned in "up to 10 working days" to my Santander account.

If you want to hurry the process up a bit, phone Halifax (08457 20 30 40) during the week and ask to speak to payment services. They are normally very good and may well be able to speed it up for you.

Mikeyorks

markums wrote: »

Three new golden rules:

• Check, check and check again ALL the details.
• Transfer £0.01 first as a test.
• Don't be such an idiot.

Just one simple rule ....... always transfer using existing data from a 'bill payment'. Never do it freehand.

(And - yes, you do a test payment first to establish the bill payment, then you re-use the data once proven)

But - in your case- the error should have been picked by the fact the Sort code / Account data should be subject to a check digit test. And it should pick up virtually every case of single transposition