Odd payment to account

Guanajuato

Just had a Bank Giro Credit payment of just under £200 go into my Santander current account. Completely unexpected and from 'Training Company' which makes no sense.

The best case is that its a typo on the account number, in which case someone hasn't got £200 they're expecting.

The worst case is its a different way of testing the validity of stolen details. Are you more likely to check up on £1 paid out of your account you don't recognise, or £200 paid in?
I went to the branch and they couldn't get any further information, such as more detail on the source of the money - seemed odd to me and them. They phoned through to head office and were told that its something they've seen a lot of recently and were transferred straight to the fraud department. A block has been put on my account, so if it is the worst case, they can't get anything. If its a mistake, the fraud investigation will identify that.
We've been told that cheques we've already written, direct debits already set up and payments into the account will still happen - handy seeing its the start of the school term and there's been loads of cheques written. We've warned the people we've written cheques to, just in case the person on the phone was mistaken. Would banks ever give wrong information?:o

Just thought I'd share. Once I get more info, I'll post. Hopefully its the mistake case and I don't have to go through all the hassle of a new account.

Vortigern

"Training Company" - could it be that the bank are training their employees using live customer data? It's unlikely that this would be permitted.

Is it possible that a bank trainee has logged on to a live database rather than the training database they were told to use?

Guanajuato

Possible. But surely training and live systems would be physically isolated to stop exactly that kind of things. Its such an obvious potential error that it would be designed out. Or should be.
The investigation would identify that and they'd have to ensure systems were put in place to prevent such an occurence in the future. Compensation for the inconvenience should add up to a few pennies short of £200 ;-)

Guanajuato

The conundrum has been solved. The Sort code & account number of the deposit match a regular payment, its just for some bizarre reason the name has been changed to something that makes no sense at all. Added to the confusion was that the payment was changing from weekly to fortnightly, so the amount wasn't a 'normal' figure.
Block removed and no hassle. Just going to have to check with the source why it changed.