Smile refusing to accept my salary BACS credit!

nick74

After recently opening an account with Smile, and generally being very impressed with their service, I have run into a very irritating problem.

At the end of last month I arranged to have my salary paid into my smile current account.
My employer made the payment (I've checked the a/c number & sort code they used are correct), the money left their account but didn't reach mine. When I rang Smile the day after the money was supposed to be in my account they told me that they'd bounced the BACS credit back to my employer's bank (Barclays) because they had "quoted the wrong account type".
I asked what they meant by this, they said "all bank accounts now have a 2 digit account type suffix after the account number. Current accounts are supposed to have '00' after the account number, but your employers bank quoted '50' so we refused the credit & returned it to your employers bank"
:mad:
To say I was angry is an understatement! The money reached them but they wouldn't credit it to my account, despite the sort code and account no being correct, because of this apparently petty bit of bureaucratic nonsense.

My employers phoned Barclays to see if they could shed any light on this, and they said Smile are talking utter rubbish - if the a/c no & sort code are correct they should accept the payment, and they said they had no idea what smile mean re this "account type" code.

Before I close my account with smile, has anyone else come across this problem?!

MrRincewind

the double "00" at the end of an account usually means it`s a current account, any other ending ie "50" denotes a savings account for example,it does seem rather petty of them to refuse payment, personally when i`v given employers my bank details i`v only ever given the six digit sort code and 8 digit account number and encountered no problems, it seems like it bounced it because of the "50" at the end, it probaly would have gone through if just account and sort code only, smile are usualy pretty good, have an isa account with them myself, hope the info helps to explain alittle

nick74

Apparently the Barclays online payment software that my employer uses has no facility to enter anything other than an 8 digit account number anyway! Smile rang them & suggested they put the "00" at the end, but there's not enough space to put in the extra digits.
Perhaps this is Barclays fault?

MrRincewind

it could well be barclays fault and there trying to pass the buck, i would be tempted to give it one more go as long as there is another way for you to recieve your wages should the problem should happen again, good luck, i`ll keep my fingers crossed;)

nick74

Thanks,

My boss has already found another way to pay my wages, he's asked me for a paying in book for my account & says that until this problem is resolved he'll send someone to the bank near the end of the month to pay it in manually over the counter for me !!

Bernard_Coleslaw

nick74 wrote:

Before I close my account with smile, has anyone else come across this problem?!

Just out of interest, what did Smile say when you raised this complaint with them?

nick74

Bernard_Coleslaw wrote:

Just out of interest, what did Smile say when you raised this complaint with them?

They blamed Barclays. I threatened to close the account, and they promised they would contact my employer & speak to Barclays to try and sort it out. Still haven't heard any more from them as yet.

nick74

I think I could have solved this mystery!

I've had a look at the software we use at work & it seems that in the settings it defaults to what it calls "account type1" for new accounts. This appears to equate to the a/c type normally used for savings accounts, so very probably where this "50" suffix is coming from. With a few exceptions almost everyone else on the payroll is being paid to the wrong account type too, but Co-Op/Smile is the only bank that worries about it, and the others let the payments go through anyway.

We are going to set the account type to "0" in the settings (which should equate to BACS type "00") and put £1 through as a test to see if this sorts it.
The worrying thing is the Barclays helpline told us that these settings in their software are irrelevent and it doesn't matter what you put in that field!

AndyR_3

I have worked in banking for over five years, for three different banks, and have never heard of a payment being rejected for this reason. Two of the banks I have worked for don't have the facility to amend this in their own internal systems anyway. I think Smile are talking a load of cobblers, to be honest.

realaledrinker

Maybe this problem only arose with the introduction of the new BACS system (BACStel) recently??

nick74

realaledrinker wrote:

Maybe this problem only arose with the introduction of the new BACS system (BACStel) recently??

Could be, Smile told me this is a recent phenomenon and has only been a problem for the past few months. They said its happening more & more now, and they've also had some of their BACS payments rejected by other banks in this way too.