I paid into wrong Barclaycard account

rb10

Surely the first thing to do is to check with your son whether it's been credited to his account.

I would have thought this is the most likely outcome.

macman

OP you have no redress, as you would expect you can't reverse a payment once made, all the bank can do is request that the payee returns it.
They're not obliged to do so just because the bank requests it.

Kayalana99

planteria wrote: »

imagine a call from your bank, informing you that someone has incorrectly sent £10k to your current account. "would you like us to send it back for you, or would you rather keep it?"

Thats basicly what happens!

Sorry OP but the only way your going to get this money back is if the person you paid it to agrees to send it !

Did anyone hear about that old couple 6months back they had been paying £1000 from her account to his for near 2 years and were paying it into the wrong account !! :eek:

(Sure it will still be in google if no one believes me as it is far fetched)

I believe the end result was the bank asked her if she wanted to pay it back and she said she'd spent it...and the old couple can't get her details because of data protection! So they lost about 24k total.

chucknorris

macman wrote: »

OP you have no redress, as you would expect you can't reverse a payment once made, all the bank can do is request that the payee returns it.
They're not obliged to do so just because the bank requests it.

Unless the money was from someone who I despised or actually owed me money then I would send it back.

It did actually happen to me once (but not from a credit card), from an ex employer who had previously refused to pay me the flexi-hours that I had worked and was owed when I left the company. I deducted what was owed to me and sent the balance back.

FOREVER21

Yes the op is at fault in the first place and regrettably because of the data protection act the bank can not disclose details.

To my mind the person who mistakenly received the money, by the fact that they keep it knowing that they are not entitled to it,(ie as stated in letter from bank asking them to return it) could be judged to be guilty of theft/fraud.

Might this work? Go to a solicitor get them to writer a letter telling them by keeping the money it may be considered theft and if the money is not returned action will be taken. Give the letter to the bank and ask them to forward it. Yes you will have to pay for the solicitors letter but it might get your money back.

planteria

as above, it may well actually have gone to the son.

please keep us informed, DMSE.

rob_b_5

Although the OP was responsible for checking the destination, banks hypocritically play this both ways.

• If a bank accidentally credits your account with some amount, they can just take it back again once they discover the mistake.
• If a customer like the OP does the same thing, they are SOL.

Perhaps personal bank transfers should require some kind of handshake like in the telecoms world:

1. Party A offers to make Party B a payment.
2. Party B accepts the offer from Party A (and at this moment, there is the opportunity to verify the identify of Party B, either through some agreed phrase or just automatically include the name of Party B in the response).
3. Party A acknowledges the acceptance and the transfer is made to Party B.

It would be a bit more hassle, but any human could possibly make this kind of mistake.

johnmoney05

rob_b wrote: »

Although the OP was responsible for checking the destination, banks hypocritically play this both ways.

• If a bank accidentally credits your account with some amount, they can just take it back again once they discover the mistake.
• If a customer like the OP does the same thing, they are SOL.

Perhaps personal bank transfers should require some kind of handshake like in the telecoms world:

1. Party A offers to make Party B a payment.
2. Party B accepts the offer from Party A (and at this moment, there is the opportunity to verify the identify of Party B, either through some agreed phrase or just automatically include the name of Party B in the response).
3. Party A acknowledges the acceptance and the transfer is made to Party B.

It would be a bit more hassle, but any human could possibly make this kind of mistake.

Well, it might work if we went back to the 19th century or eariler! :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

rob_b wrote: »

Although the OP was responsible for checking the destination, banks hypocritically play this both ways.

• If a bank accidentally credits your account with some amount, they can just take it back again once they discover the mistake.
• If a customer like the OP does the same thing, they are SOL.

I don't understand this either!

I'm sure I read somewhere too that if a payment is paid in to your account that's not your money it's considered theft if you don't return it! I might be making that up though!

pvt

I wonder if there is a point that is being missed in all this debate about crediting someone else's "account":

As far as the bank is concerned the OP has credited money to Barclaycard. They have a single bank account number for all these payments. The mistake the OP has made is providing the wrong reference with this payment. So it is not the same as a person crediting the wrong bank account, it is the right bank account, but with the wrong reference to Barclaycard.

I don't see that Barclaycard have to ask permission of the credit card account holder to correct the error, just notify them of an error which they intend to correct.

Also, I am very sceptical that account numbers would be reused. Assuming the first 4 digits are fixed for any one organisation, the remaining 12 digits would in theory allow about one trillion unique account numbers to be generated. Even allowing for checksums and other validation stuff, the number of separate account numbers available to any one organisation would surely be in the billions.