Companies which insist your account details are wrong!

Legacy_user

Having recently moved to Metro Bank I am switching all my direct debits and am irritated by three companies who insist I am not giving them correct details for my bank account. Most companies are fine, but Severn Trent Water, Anglian Water and Virgin Media 'do not recognise' my bank. They seem to do some sort of auto check on the sort code and arrogantly inform me it does not exist.

Does anyone know if there is anything I can do (apart from changing bank!)? Why can't they just ask me to fill in a mandate and post it off so they can then send it directly to the bank?

maninthestreet

scgf wrote: »

Having recently moved to Metro Bank I am switching all my direct debits and am irritated by three companies who insist I am not giving them correct details for my bank account. Most companies are fine, but Severn Trent Water, Anglian Water and Virgin Media 'do not recognise' my bank. They seem to do some sort of auto check on the sort code and arrogantly inform it does not exist.

Does anyone know if there is anything I can do (apart from changing bank!)? Why can't they just ask me to fill in a mandate and post it off so they can then send it directly to the bank?

Have you raised this issue with Metro Bank? They may have some way of informing the companies in question of their sort code.

rb10

Every bank has a list of sort codes, which tells them that, for example, sort code 12-34-56 corresponds to XYZ Bank.

However, as banks open new branches, and new banks (like Metro Bank) start up completely, new sort codes need to be added to the lists.

Banks are supposed to update their lists every couple of weeks or so. However, they don't always to this, which results in them not recognising that a sort code exists.

The complaint really needs to be made with the bank(s) that are stopping the payments from going through - i.e. whoever provides the Direct Debit facilities for the companies that you've had trouble with. This, however, is information that's difficult to get hold of.

The simplest solution - I'm sorry to say - is to change to a different bank. (At least for the time being).

I know that it took HSBC about 5 months to add a new Halifax branch that opened a couple of years ago onto the sort code list, so it could be quite a wait!

Milarky

Given 'sort' refers to hand sorting cheques - the old horse and buggy way the banks insist on - and the cheques are be abolished at blizzard speed in about 7 or 8 years time, wlll 'sort code' have to be changed to something more meaningful, I wonder, like 'branch code'?

Joe_Bloggs

Sort code enthusiasts can indulge themselves here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sort_codes_of_the_United_Kingdom
It does list Metro Bank. It also mentions Martins Bank.
J_B.

rb10

Milarky wrote: »

Given 'sort' refers to hand sorting cheques - the old horse and buggy way the banks insist on - and the cheques are be abolished at blizzard speed in about 7 or 8 years time, wlll 'sort code' have to be changed to something more meaningful, I wonder, like 'branch code'?

Branch code is fairly out of date now though. The actual branch that my sort code corresponds to doesn't have anything to do with running my account - it's all done centrally.

Olipro

a list of sort codes is maintained and periodically updated, if a company is insisting the sort code is wrong, then the truth is that they haven't updated their systems with the new sort codes.

JohalaReewi

Some big company systems have built in bank sort code checkers which validate the data input against the bank sort code list. If the company don't keep the list of sort codes up to date, they won't be able to input new ones.

The problem is definitely with Severn Trent Water, Anglian Water and Virgin Media who need to update their database of valid sort codes.