Finance company lost my online payments

Tigerchops

Hi, anybody got any advice. I have been making payments online to my finance company. I have made five payments EXACTLY the same way, but they have lost two payments. I have contacted my bank, who have supplied me with the Faster Payment Details. These show all my information was input correctly. The finance company says it has no record of payments 2 and 4 of the 5 payments made. They are currently refusing to credit my account, until they can find the money. It has been three weeks now.
Thanks for any help, tigerchops

Miss_Havisham

all on-line payments can be traced, the decision here is who will do it ?

Did you pay the money to another bank for the account of the finance company ? If so then the finance co should ask their bank where the money is, giving them the FP ref that your bank has given you.

If their bank cannot trace the payment then it's over to your bank to track it through the payments system and prove that it did actually reach the other bank. Once found the money should be credited to your account "back-dated" in whatever way they use to nullify interest and any "default" markers.

You'll need to be a bit pushy with all concerned, banks don't like wasting time doing this sort of investigation (I know, I used to work for one!) Good luck

Miss H

Tigerchops

Thanks miss H.
My bank faxed all the F P info over to the finance company and sent them a letter on my behalf. The finance company tells me they still can't find the payments. I went back to my bank who then told me,there wasn't much more they could do. The F P records show the finance company Accepted as shown on the Payment Status. The finance company says they have 8 weeks to resolve this before I can get the ombudsman involved. Isn't the F P report proof enough that I have paid them.

Miss_Havisham

Sorry this is a long reply, hope it makes sense.

Firstly, payments are tracked electronically from start (your account is debited) to finish (payee's account is credited).

1. You can see that your acc has been debited.
2. your bank confirms they sent the payment
3. your banks says the payment was Accepted "by the finance co". It's more likely that it was Accepted by the bank with which the finance company banks. -

this will be the sort code you quoted on your payment (or that bank's payments dept)

SO, the finance co should check with their bank and ask them to trace the payment from their end - they will be able to see the payment arriving, they just need to see what they did with it - might have paid it to the wrong account or it might be hanging around on a "dropped payments" account and they haven't got around to sorting it.

Your bank could also get in touch with the other bank and tell them that the finance co is "claiming no-receipt" and ask that bank to investigate.

As I said in my first post, this sort of problem can be a nightmare, purely because many millions of payments are made daily and investigations need a lot of experienced staff.

Miss H

Tigerchops

A big thanks to miss H. Things went pretty much as she said they would. For anyone else who reads this and has a similar problem, it seems it was essential that Faster Payment records were provided, to help find missing funds. These were provided quite helpfully at my Barclays branch. Without which I think I'd still be waiting. Got some costs and compensation too. :j
Tigerchops