URGENT- Re: Mistaken online BACS payment

AnonymousForObviousReason

The_Baroness wrote: »

Hi guys

Success!

And if anyone says Santander is no help on any day. You are *SO* wrong!

That was me and *SO* glad I was wrong in your case. :T It was a bit tongue in cheek .

If you look through my posts you'll see a number are very anti this bank recently because of the service I had. I did have this in my sig - so people knew I was (justifiably) bias but it got removed

The_Baroness wrote: »

Huge thanks to you guys over this one. Maybe we should have thought of all the options, but heck, when it's that much money, your heart goes a bit funny and that sick feeling in your stomach makes your brain go to jelly.

I don't think anyone blames you getting worried about a large chunk of money and not seeing everything right away, think this shows the best of forums.
I only knew they had Sunday opening because I had to call them last week (and no it wasn't as successful as your call but it was less important in comparison).

m33r4

Phew just in time! Well done moneysavingexperters! You guys always do your best to save those in trouble:T

The_Baroness

le_loup wrote: »

No. All praise to helpful people who happen to want to help out of the goodness of their hearts.
Martin counts his money on a Sunday!

You are absolutely right and that is who I meant by Martin's team of moneysavers. The great guys (and gals!) who make up these forums and the amazing fount of knowledge available as a result :A

Sorry to hear you are having a bad time with Santander, Anonymous. Hope your problem with them is resolved quickly

Lokolo

Can I make a suggestion... remove the person from your list of payees....

The_Baroness

Lokolo wrote: »

Can I make a suggestion... remove the person from your list of payees....

It has been done! The only reason the person was there was because I had one more payment left to make to them...but considerably smaller than the one I just cancelled

The_Baroness

Dear Money savers

You know I said Santander had good customer service?

How wrong I was!

Anonymous, I apologise to you - you were indeed correct about them

On Sunday they promised that the money would not go through to the mistaken recipient.
On Monday morning, they said the same thing. The payment would definitely been cancelled.
On Tuesday it was the same message.

On Wednesday morning, the same thing again.

At 10.05 am on Wednesday we got a phone call, saying the recall had failed, and the money had gone through to the recipient.

I recorded that conversation and others, and the manager from Santander said (and this is a direct verbatim quote)

"What we are going to do is write the money off into your account today. We will do the recall in the normal fashion. We will write to the other bank and ask them to get the funds back for us. In the meantime we will get the money in this afternoon for you. It has been our error."

They went on, "I am sorry about this. There has been two errors. On Sunday the people cancelled the bill payment instruction, rather than the payment itself. They did that wrong and then on Monday the recall team did not pick it up so the recall was not made on Monday. it is our double error. The money will definitely be in your account this afternoon. And I'll send on the dissatisfaction on your behalf."

At 14:15 we got a call from a senior manager at Santander who went through a series of security checks before saying, "I am going to get your account credited with £XXXX."

He then asked me to call the recipient to request the money back

I found this a bit of a surprise, but called her any way. As expected, she was not co-operative.

So I called him back and he said.

"The problem is that we cannot pay the money into your account without a guarantee that it will come back for us to cover it."

And despite two managers promising us the money would be credited to our account today, the money is still not there.

So we are left thousands of pounds out of pocket because they made mistakes; they admitted their mistakes, but they are demanding guarantees from us that we can rectify their mistakes.

Furthermore, nothing that Santander told us has been truthful.

They said the payments had been stopped - Lie
They said the money would not get to the recipient's account - Lie
They said they would credit our account today - Lie
They said they would write off the money - Lie.

OK, now I understand why people dislike this bank so much.

So, is there a thread on suing the bank for negligence in the small claims court?
Yes, it's less than £5000

Baroness

pointypenguin

If you are going to take anyone to court should it not be the person that received the money? Maybe a letter from a solicitor would be enough to scare them into giving it back.

Then you coud go through the complaints procedure with the bank and the ombudsman if that doesn't help to get come sort of compensation.

I understand you are angry at the bank and I agree that Santander are rubbish but when you make a payment thorugh online banking it is your responsibility to ensure it is correct that is why there is a confirmation screen.

Good luck hope you get your cash back.

AnonymousForObviousReason

pointypenguin wrote: »

If you are going to take anyone to court should it not be the person that received the money? Maybe a letter from a solicitor would be enough to scare them into giving it back.

Then you coud go through the complaints procedure with the bank and the ombudsman if that doesn't help to get come sort of compensation.

I understand you are angry at the bank and I agree that Santander are rubbish but when you make a payment thorugh online banking it is your responsibility to ensure it is correct that is why there is a confirmation screen.

Good luck hope you get your cash back.

It was a mistake which should have been rectified and if the bank had done their job properly would have. You could sue for distress and loss of interest and any other charges but not for the amount.

However (I think but not a lawyer) you have a good chance of getting your money from the recipient. If a person has money which they know doesn't belong to them (you did note when you called) and they spend it or keep it this is a criminal offence of fraud (I always thought it would be theft but there you go). Because it's less than 17k they would only face up to 21 months in jail though.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/dishonestly_retaining_a_wrongful_credit/

If you have time go down the solicitor letter route, if you don't then I go to the police - if you're local to each other I suggest you say you don't want to press charges initially you just want the money returned and by approaching her yourself you're worried it could lead to confrontations.

No need to apologise, I was glad it all looked good for you. Good luck.

seafarers_wife

I had something similar with santander a couple of years ago. i had a standing order set up to pay my share of the rent and bills to my flatmate, i cancelled it when i moved out but santander still paid the money the next month.

I went through the complaints process and kicked up such a stink with them as they had made numerous mistakes prior to that, so the eventual outcome was them refunding me the money as "compensation" and going through their own process to get the money back from my ex flatmate, as she was a bleep there was no way she was returning the money despite me asking.

as far as im aware they never got the money back from my ex flatmate but i wasnt out of pocket and was my main concern.

good luck getting it back and i cant stress this enough, write down the date and time of every conversation, their name, ext number if they will give you it and the gist of the conversation if you arent able to record it as their will be so many phonecalls over the next few weeks.

kayho123

what a horrible person the reciever of this mistaken payment must be if they refuse to pay it back when it is not their money i am shocked at how dishonest some people are
good luck OP in sorting this mess out