Cheque credited for wrong amount. What happens?

Hazzanet

Biggles wrote:

Not at all sure about that. The link says that Under the system of paying bank truncation being introduced from 1997 onwards (eh? how old is this?) the cheque is not returned to the paying branch but retained at some central point. In any event, it might depend on what amount is encoded on the cheque at the receiving branch, I don't know if that's done as the cheque is received over the counter or later on (which would be a double check). If the former, it will have gone through as £3,000 and the 'tills will balance'.

I do know that I have had similar errors occur (but for much smaller amounts) and they have only been corrected after I pointed them out to the bank.

I think, in this, case, I would leave it to the person who wrote the cheque to ring their bank.

Same day truncation came in ages ago, and when I worked for the NatWest, we could amend the last two digits (transaction code) to make Bank Giro Credits apply to the account the same day for a branch other than our own. For example, before 1997, if you paid cash in at Branch X using a BGC and your account was held at Branch Y, you would have to wait 2/3 days for the credit to "clear" through the clearing system. Same day truncation bypassed that and applied the credit by the end of the business day.

Originally, cheques were returned to the issuing branch, so if your account was held at the John O'Groats branch, the cheque would physically return to John O'Groats for a decision as to whether it would be paid. As this was expensive and time consuming, many banks changed the process so that they all had "Voucher Processing Centres" which handled all the paper vouchers (cheques/Bank Giro Credits) and the payment decision was made there. So for Natwest, I believe it was Northampton. Cheques still return to the issuing bank, but not necessarily the branch in question. Many a time, I was sent down to the basement of my branch to search through the old cheques (known as waste) to sort something for the taxman. Literally, boxes of cheques.

Nowadays, and at the time I worked there, they were phasing in digital copies, and the originals were destroyed. Copies of cheques could be pulled up on screen.

To the question in hand: The error will be realised at some point, and your account will be debited with an adjustment for £1,000 when they go through the audit log. They'll write to you advising what they've done (if they're doing things properly). Can they do it? Yes they can so long as they can prove why they've done it.

squibbs25

Just to update everyone, my sister went to the cashpoint to get a on screen balance, and the have credited the correct amount to her account. :j
Looks like the building society must have sorted it out yesterday when the accounts didn't balance.
A big thank you to you all for your help and advice.

Squibbs