Faster Payment FPS over the weekend. Grrrr

stringjunior

My wife recently received a faster payment of £200 which arrived at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. The balance on her account showed the funds were in her account and she proceeded to spend some of it over the weekend.

This week she received a letter from her bank (Yorkshire Bank) saying she was being charged £25 for unauthorised borrowing of £31. This related to the weekend of the FPS transfer. On further inspection her bank statement showed the £200 transfer had not cleared in her account until the Monday after the weekend.

She complained to the bank and was told that as the funds had been received after the close of business Friday it could not be treated as cleared until Monday, and they were not prepared to do anything about the charge.

Now, I understand the old banking concept of working days and 3:30 cut offs, but I always thought the FPS was a 24 hour system, in fact the Yorkshire Banks website clearly states as much.

I'm keen for the wife to complain further, but does anybody have any experience in a similar situation which could add to the arguement.

Many thanks

JuicyJesus

There isn't really much of an argument other than that it's fundamentally unfair to be able to see funds in the account as cleared and available but also not be able to spend them.

Raise a complaint. While the FPS official timescale is for funds to be available by the next working day, if the funds are credited I can't see a reason why you shouldn't be able to draw against them.

YorkshireBoy

stringjunior wrote: »

The balance on her account showed the funds were in her account...

What about the available balance?

When YB was my main account, any (BACS Direct) credits due on Monday were 'available' to spend after Friday night's processing. Likewise, any scheduled outgoing payments dated Monday were subtracted from the 'available' balance. Typically all this occurred around 10.30pm Friday night.

Disclaimer: I did have a large overdraft facility, so maybe that's the difference between you and I?

dotdash79

Just out of interest did you have an balance and an available to withdraw figures on your screen?

i.e.

Balance £220.13
Available to withdraw : £20.13

Dr_Cuckoo3

http://www.ybonline.co.uk/personal/current-accounts/terms-and-conditions/

3.3.5
Any automated credits paid into your Account will
be credited to your Account on the Business Day of
receipt by the Bank. The amount of the automated
credit will be Cleared for Use the day your Account
is credited and will be available for you to use
immediately. The funds will also be Cleared for
Value on that day.

3.3.6
Where any payment into your Account takes place
after the Cut-Off Time on any Business Day or at
any time on a day which is not a Business Day, it
may not be processed until the following Business
Day. In these circumstances, the following Business
Day shall be treated as the date of receipt and the
time periods in Conditions 3.3.2 to 3.3.5 shall be
extended accordingly

3.3.7 - "Some payments can be made from and received
into Accounts on non-Business Days. This may
mean that the Account receiving the funds shows
them as being Cleared for Use and the Account
from which the funds have been paid will show
them as no longer being available. However,
the processing of these payments will not be
completed until the next Business Day and this will
be the day used for calculating any interest. Your
statement will also show this as the day on which
the payments were made or received"

dalesrider

stringjunior wrote: »

My wife recently received a faster payment of £200 which arrived at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. The balance on her account showed the funds were in her account and she proceeded to spend some of it over the weekend.

This week she received a letter from her bank (Yorkshire Bank) saying she was being charged £25 for unauthorised borrowing of £31. This related to the weekend of the FPS transfer. On further inspection her bank statement showed the £200 transfer had not cleared in her account until the Monday after the weekend.

She complained to the bank and was told that as the funds had been received after the close of business Friday it could not be treated as cleared until Monday, and they were not prepared to do anything about the charge.

Go back on this basis.....

If the FP has not credited till Monday as it was received after 17:30.
How come transactions made after she had checked the £200 have debited through.... So even later than 17:30...
What type of transactions were these?

They cannot have it both ways.
Credits are supposed to show on the account before debits.

Unless she spent more than she had available.

I would let this go all the way to the FCA.

Dr_Cuckoo3

dalesrider wrote: »

Go back on this basis.....

If the FP has not credited till Monday as it was received after 17:30.
How come transactions made after she had checked the £200 have debited through.... So even later than 17:30...
What type of transactions were these?

They cannot have it both ways.
Credits are supposed to show on the account before debits.

Unless she spent more than she had available.

I would let this go all the way to the FCA.

It is possible that a transaction in the form of a faster payment outwards would be dated after the inwards faster payment , but a debit card transaction may bear the actual date

I think FOS are T&C lovers (it's in the T&C guv - T&C are the law guv) , but I do agree that it should be pursued using the FOS

JuicyJesus

Dr_Cuckoo3 wrote: »

I think FOS are T&C lovers (it's in the T&C guv - T&C are the law guv) , but I do agree that it should be pursued using the FOS

Normally I would agree that it's in the T&Cs, but this is an onerous term in that it makes it possible to get charged for spending money that is cleared and in the account (Faster Payments are cleared for value as soon as they are received, regardless of what Yorkshire Bank say; unlike, say, a cheque, which takes the four working days to be available for withdrawal and thus should attract a charge) and is so radically different from expected behaviour that it's fundamentally unfair.

Also, as dalesrider points out, they cannot have it both ways - they can't say that the money in was dated the next working day due to systems limitations while the money out is dated the same day.

(As a point of fact, FOS do rely on the terms, but generally will not hesitate to overrule these should they be deemed to be onerous or unfair, which as far as I personally am concerned applies here.)

Dr_Cuckoo3

Yorkshire Bank are not the only bank to charge overdraft fees where "cleared" funds are in the account.

Barclays used to charge overdraft fees where cash had been deposited over the branch counter after 3pm and withdrawn before the next working day even though the money appeared in the online banking balance (Barclays may still do this).

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2094127
"


"
There are current accounts like N&P that receive faster payment credits at weekends but do not update balances on non working days and will charge overdraft fees if the funds are used.


I'm not sure whether you find fault with Barclays procedure mentioned above (or consider the Yorkshire Bank and Barclays matter to be similar).

Presumably Yorkshire/ Clydesdale Bank are the only major bank with this policy and Barclays the only major bank to treat cash deposits as not available until the next working day.

Has anyone complained to the bank or ombudsman about this matter ? , I imagine it affects quite a few customers.

If the ombudsman had upheld a complaint , then I would expect the bank to change it's policy and make proactive refunds to all customers affected as in the ATM case below (in which the FOS was an irrelevance / not involved as far as I am aware).

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/banking/2012/12/hundreds-of-thousands-in-line-for-atm-refund

Either nobody has complained to the FOS , FOS have said tough you agreed to T&C or the bank has refunded as a "first offence"

In this case the funds were probably withdrawn using a debit card which may have messed up the order of transactions.

Using the funds for a faster payment withdrawal may well of resulted in the withdrawal being listed after the deposit and not charged.

The dalesrider post does not appear to know the method of withdrawal I can see why a weekend cash machine withdrawal may be charged before the next working day.

pqrdef

On the face of it, it makes no difference whether the FP was credited to the account on Friday or Monday, because the spending over the weekend wasn't on the statement at close of business on Friday, and by close of business on Monday it was covered.

If the account was overdrawn at close of business on Friday, it must have been some payment that went out on Friday that took it overdrawn. In that case, it's disappointing that the sender of the FP left it so late, but there has to be a cut-off.

Dr_Cuckoo3

of course there are a lot of posters on the thread with Yorkshire Bank accounts who know first hand how Yorkshire Bank accounts operate

Its not all guesswork with this lot