Refunding Bank Transfer to wrong details

stclair

Bring back the days of BACS payments least they could have been recalled within a certain time frame.

However on a serious note I wonder if consumers will ever get any kind of protection for these kind of circumstances.

grumbler

What kind of protection do you suggest if the erroneous recipient doesn't allow to return the money?

stclair

grumbler wrote: »

What kind of protection do you suggest if the erroneous recipient doesn't allow to return the money?

I was thinking more for the sender... Natwest/RBS online banking tells you if the details are incorrect when setting up an online banking payment.

dalesrider

stclair wrote: »

Bring back the days of BACS payments least they could have been recalled within a certain time frame.

However on a serious note I wonder if consumers will ever get any kind of protection for these kind of circumstances.

Consumers wanted faster payments.

This case is quite clear Santander should be chasing Nationwide. But it could be Nationwide are not helping.

Perhaps if the person the OP was paying to was to contact Nationwide and give them the account details they may be able to sort it out quicker.
But you will need to get passed the 1st line call center and to the banking team that deals with these issues.

stclair

dalesrider wrote: »

Consumers wanted faster payments.

This case is quite clear Santander should be chasing Nationwide. But it could be Nationwide are not helping.

Perhaps if the person the OP was paying to was to contact Nationwide and give them the account details they may be able to sort it out quicker.
But you will need to get passed the 1st line call center and to the banking team that deals with these issues.

That does not answer the question. However your reply may assist the OP somewhat.

However your suggestion may not work as it would have to be the sending bank doing the investigating nationwide would not be interested if you walked in saying mrs x sent a payment to you and it's gone AWOL and the details was incorrect.

The OP could get a trace letter from Santander then forward it to nationwide and see if they will act on it.

opinions4u

It's time the regulator and the banks got to grips with this sort of issue.

The inadvertent recipient should, after a process has been invoked, be given a short period of time to justify why the money is theirs to keep. If they don't respond (or simply admit to the funds not being theirs), their bank should be able to remove the funds and return them to the sending bank who reimburse the customer.

The fat fingered sender should be liable for a £10 fee. Banks should have the option not to charge it.

innovate

Sounds a great and simple enough solution, and it's surprising they didn't think of a solution to the issue as part of the Faster Payments project.

Even more surprising that they appear to be allowing payments to go into a black hole (aka "holding account") when an incorrect sort code/account number is specified. That one should be dead easy to resolve - and I gather some, but not all, banks do it like that - by just not accepting a payment instruction if the receiving bank does not recognise the sort code and account number combination.

dalesrider

stclair wrote: »

That does not answer the question. However your reply may assist the OP somewhat.

OK. Because BACS sat in a holding account. Before being passed to the actual account. It could be pulled back from there. Now with faster payments it debits the account and cannot be pulled back. Unless the other party agrees

stclair wrote: »

However your suggestion may not work as it would have to be the sending bank doing the investigating nationwide would not be interested if you walked in saying mrs x sent a payment to you and it's gone AWOL and the details was incorrect.

But the bonus here is they know what the wrong acc details are. Because they gave them.
So Nationwide should be able to tell straight away if this a genuine account. If its not then the funds are in a holding account and the yneed to look into that.

stclair wrote: »

The OP could get a trace letter from Santander then forward it to nationwide and see if they will act on it.

Santander will/should have already of done this.

stclair

dalesrider wrote: »

OK. Because BACS sat in a holding account. Before being passed to the actual account. It could be pulled back from there. Now with faster payments it debits the account and cannot be pulled back. Unless the other party agrees



But the bonus here is they know what the wrong acc details are. Because they gave them.
So Nationwide should be able to tell straight away if this a genuine account. If its not then the funds are in a holding account and the yneed to look into that.




Santander will/should have already of done this.

Your comments still did not successfully answer the question which was:

I wonder if consumers will ever get any kind of protection for these kind of circumstances.

dalesrider

stclair wrote: »

Your comments still did not successfully answer the question which was:

I wonder if consumers will ever get any kind of protection for these kind of circumstances.

Well if you had said which question

They have got protection.
If its to a incorrect account, which is not open. Then its sat in a internal holding account at the recieving bank. It is then their responsibilty to return it to the sending bank.
If it get sent to a active account, but not the right one. Then the recieving bank would be asked by the sending bank to contact account holder and ask for the funds to be returned.

So in the OP's case it could well be sat back with santander in a internal account waiting to be put back to his account.

I know we work reports on a daily basis of failed DD's, S/O's & faster payments.
These are returned to the sending bank with the reason why it has been returned. These are usually within 2 days. But can be longer if another bank has changed something.
One month we had well over a thousand DD etc to bounce back due to another bank changing their details.
All this is done manually to ensure that customers have not resolved the issue themselves.