Cahoot weekend transactions??

TheKraken_2

I have a cahoot current account for my own personal use, and an abbey joint account which my wife and I use. I get paid on the 23rd of the month, and have a standing order to pay a proportion of my salary into the joint account on the 24th.

In September the 23rd was a Saturday, so my pay didn't appear in my account until Monday the 25th. However, even though it was a non-working day, Cahoot attempted to take the standing order on Sunday the 24th, when there were insufficient funds in the account. As such, I received a £25 charge for an unpaid standing order. Additionally I didn't spot the money hadn't transferred for a week, at which time several direct debits on the joint account attracted a £30 charge for insufficient funds, plus an additional £20 overdraft fee.

Is a bank such as cahoot allowed to have one rule for inbound money, and another for outbound? Can they really not allow money in on a non-working day, but allow money out?

Any advice?

TheKraken_2

As an update, I finally had a response from Cahoot's "Service Relationship Team", who I had questioned about this. Their response, was entirely unhelpful :

I can confirm that we attempted to process your standing order request on the 24th of the month which was unsuccessful due to insufficient funds in your account on this date. As the attempt was made on the date requested by you we feel that cahoot are not liable for the charges incurred on your Abbey account.

So effectively, they can remove money on a non-working day if you've asked them too, even though you can't pay in money yourself on a non-working day.

PBA

Generally money for an outgoing standing order has to be cleared in the account by close of business the day before the outgoing payment is due, as standing orders are sent as an overnight batch process. Therefore your pay would have had to be in on the Friday for the standing order to go through, regardless of whether the date on the screen was the Sunday or the Monday.

Incidentally is it normal practise of your employer to pay late when the pay day falls on a weekend? My current employer, and I'm pretty sure all employers I've worked for, pay early when the due date is a weekend or bank hol. If your employer made an error and accidentally paid late then it's them who should be paying the charges.

TheKraken_2

PBA wrote:

Generally money for an outgoing standing order has to be cleared in the account by close of business the day before the outgoing payment is due, as standing orders are sent as an overnight batch process. Therefore your pay would have had to be in on the Friday for the standing order to go through, regardless of whether the date on the screen was the Sunday or the Monday.

Incidentally is it normal practise of your employer to pay late when the pay day falls on a weekend? My current employer, and I'm pretty sure all employers I've worked for, pay early when the due date is a weekend or bank hol. If your employer made an error and accidentally paid late then it's them who should be paying the charges.

Yes, I always get paid late when pay-day falls on a weekend. I don't think it's a case of my employer paying late, they just send the payments in on the 23rd, and if that happens to be a weekend, I get paid the next working day. My wife employer, like yours, pays her early in such circumstances.

Thankfully, I've now had a further email from cahoot offering to pay the entire charge incurred. It didn't help their cause when I checked back through my statements for the last twelve months and found that on the other two occasions this year when the 23rd fell on a weekend, they took the standing order on the next working day.

They accepted there had clearly been a problem with their system in this instance, which is hugely annoying, as its exactly the opposite of what they said initially.