Advice when Bank takes £8,000 in error.

Icqabargin

Our online savings bank took £8,000 out of our account on Monday due to an administration error. After repeat phone calls to their customer service centre throughout the week I managed to get my account credited with the sum late on Friday. The bank has said it will pay the lost interest but should I be able claim any form of compensation for the worry / panic / time / phone calls etc ?

I do not want to seem greedy but the loss of the money for 5 days did worry me a lot as it did not appear after I reported the problem on Monday afternoon. To me it was theft.

Any advice would be very welcome before I write my complaint letter.

jonesMUFCforever

Did they say why the money was taken?
Was it a bank error or an attempted fraud?

I would certainly agree that the interest should be covered. Why did you repeat call the service centres? All banks have SLA for procedures and I would have thought that one call should have been sufficent.
You have to give the bank time to investigate.

Icqabargin

It was a bank mistake. Hopefully you will follow my understanding of the matter:-
They wrongly thought I had succeeded to transfer £8k into my account from another bank using a direct debit in March. (the sum is over their recently imposed £5k limit for direct debit movements.)
Their online system continued to process direct debit transactions over the £5k limit. This meant the customer viewing the account will see whatever value e.g. £8k credit their account on the specified day. Approx 3 days later and because of the £5k limit the error is spotted in some way and £8k is moved back out again effectively cancelling the transfer.

This did happen to me because I did not realise they had changed their direct debit transfer limits.

I now gather because the online web site allowed values over £5k to be requested, other customers continued to attempt to move money and for some reason it was not identified as an error and taken back out of their account as it should. I was told they assumed I was one who had benefited from such a transfer in March and because they had not intercepted and corrected the error, Hence £8k vanished form my account with no notification.

I repeatedly called them because a direct debit in error should be credited as soon as the bank is notified. I had nothing in writing to confirm I was getting my money back even though I had requested that.

I think if £8k vanished from your account you too would ring up to find out where it was having been told it would be credited the next day, only to find it was not ?

moonrakerz

Icqabargin wrote: »

Our online savings bank took £8,000 out of our account on Monday due to an administration error. After repeat phone calls to their customer service centre throughout the week I managed to get my account credited with the sum late on Friday. The bank has said it will pay the lost interest but should I be able claim any form of compensation for the worry / panic / time / phone calls etc ?

I do not want to seem greedy but the loss of the money for 5 days did worry me a lot as it did not appear after I reported the problem on Monday afternoon. To me it was theft.

Any advice would be very welcome before I write my complaint letter.

Ooohh, compensation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Money, money, money !!!!

Advice: people - and banks make mistakes ! Grow up !

ohmsoft

I agree that the compensation culture has gone nuts but I would imagine the bank would levy a charge if it was the other way for "administration" (even if it would then be claimed back as "unlawfull")

I think a reasonable request for out of pocket expenses would be fine

tom188

Perhaps your post should be used to show the other side of the coin when we have the weekly "£1000 has appeared in my account, can I keep it".

jonesMUFCforever

It sounds to me that it was not a direct debit at all but some sort of bill payment between accounts.
If this is the case then the D/D indemnity scheme does not apply.

ben500

Bombard the fvckers with letters stating the bleeding obvious and charge them £35 a time for them.

Icqabargin

Thank you all for your comments and advice it is appreciated.

Hopefully moonrakerz never encounters such a problem in life with lost money and wakes up one day in the real world to understand a bank is a business who charges people when they make even the smallest of mistakes. (re current situation championed by Martin, on claiming back bank charges etc).

How about a free loan moonrakerz ? :-)

Labman_2

Icqabargin wrote: »

.......To me it was theft.

It was a mistake, not theft.

Icqabargin wrote: »

Any advice would be very welcome before I write my complaint letter.

Don't write a letter....it was sorted inside 5 days so forget it & move on.

blisteringblue

Icqabargin wrote: »

It was a bank mistake. Hopefully you will follow my understanding of the matter:-
They wrongly thought I had succeeded to transfer £8k into my account from another bank using a direct debit in March. (the sum is over their recently imposed £5k limit for direct debit movements.)

If this is the case then the payment went back into the originating account?

Was this another of your bank accounts? If so then it went back to you anyway?