Absolutely furious and upset

loopydonna

Just an update:

3 weeks later and still no refund of my money

I've just called Capital One who said the lady who was dealing with it has been off sick, and they are not sure what is happening :rolleyes:

The man I was speaking to said he couldn't help further, and someone will ring me back when they find out what is going on.

MABLE

Not good enough. Ring back and speak to her Manager. Its your money and your responsibility to repay the debt.

Best of luck

LeifGR

Definitely time to contact one of the papers' consumer sections - I think they would find the story printworthy and it is certain to speed up a resolution of your case. If I were you I would also press Capital One for some compensation.

The Sunday Times' Question of Money can be contacted at (quote from their website):

E-mail Diana Wright at the address below (no attachments please) or write to A Question of Money, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST, giving a daytime telephone number. We cannot send personal replies or deal with every letter. Please do not send original documents or SAEs. Advice is offered without legal responsibility
questionofmoney@sunday-times.co.uk

Sponge

This is a totally shocking story and you have my sympathy. I hope it's resolved soon.

As far as Capital One, I have my own reasons for never using them again, but this just adds to them.

ravenk

Is this the Capital one that advertises about fraud prevention, but then does everything it can to block you getting your money back from someone who has your money ...but just will not give it back. By now I would imagine this person has blown the money and closed the credit card account.
Just imagine dealing with these guys on a fraudulant transaction ...
Err we forgot about a rule that we could apply....
Err the girls of sick today...
Most of the staff are most likely busy applying late payment charges to peoples cards and working on new small print and legal loop holes to squeze more money from card holders....After all this aint costing them anything ...just you ...As I have said in prior ...Human mistakes are punished in the hardest way possible and not acceptable..unless its them who made it !

loopydonna

Good news!

Yesterday I rang the complaints department and managed to get to speak to a manager in the Executive Office(?).

She read all the notes on my file and realised what had happened, so she transferred the money immediately from the other persons account to my account.

I've just logged in to my account this morning, and the money is there. I wasn't sure if I should believe it till I saw it in black and white with my own eyes - lol.

So at least the matter is finally sorted out.

I've still had to pay interest on the £1200 since it went missing in May, which hasn't been refunded, nor I have I had any sort of apology from Capital One for not acting on this when they were first notified of the problem.

I did expect them to be a little more helpful considering I've been a customer for 11 years. I am now in the process of closing my account, and my husband is also closing his in protest!

Thanks again everyone for all the constructive comments and support. They were very much appreciated.

peterbaker

Woooah loopy donna ... DON'T CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT YET !

What about the £1,200 interest ?

Forgive me jumping in without reading the whole thread yet, but even if it wasn't Capital One's mistake in the first place, don't close the account until someone has refunded your interest at the very least. You need Capital One to respond constructively to any enquiries by the other bank. If you close the account:

1. Capital One are most unlikely to pay you a penny more for anything
2. Capital One are quite likely to respond "Sorry the account has been closed. We can't help" to any enquiry from the other bank.

You solved the main problem, but I suggest you now press for the interest. Whichever bank has had the benefit of your money in another account since you flagged the problem should pay that.

I'll go and read the first part of the thread now to see what I missed...

Elliesmum

I've just read this thread with huge interest and I am so glad things have got sorted in the end. I cannot believe what you have been through.

Good luck for the future..............

EM xx

peterbaker

OK loopydonna I have read the whole thread now. This is what I would do:

Contact the executive department again - same person if possible and try saying something like:

"Thank you so much for crediting the £XXXX back into the correct account. You can't imagine what a relief it was for me to login/receive my latest statement and see it in black and white. It has been a nightmare from start to finish. You may not have realised quite how long I have been trying to get Capital One to do this ? It has been three whole months and as a result of no-one realising what should be done until you got the file, you have charged me £400 for each of those months for my own money ! I have dutifully paid those amounts whilst waiting for it all to be rectified. The balance on the account is now zero but that's actually £1,200 I am down ! Could you please rectify it and send me a cheque or credit the interest to my account so I can spend it (don't mind which) ?"

I have made mistakes like yours two or three times over the years. Sometimes I have used an old account number by mistake, sometimes I have got the numbers wrong like you. I have never been told the money went to someone else, but I have twice been told it went into a holding account for unreconciled/unidentified receipts where it took far too long to trace. It is a horrible feeling when you realise such large amounts are not where they are supposed to have gone, and until you have sorted it out. I have never failed to get the interest back.

If there is any further reluctance by Capital One to right this, then insist that they confirm that the number you used was EXACTLY the number of the dishonest customer's account. I am not convinced that two wrong digits out of sixteen is enough to discover someone else's account, else dishonest people would be daily taking their own numbers and altering them by a couple of digits, then playing with expiry dates to successfully make internet transactions.

Grade_A_Reject raises an extremely valid point. The first six digits out of sixteen I believe, is used to identify the bank a bit like a sort code. So even if you got those right and your error was in the last ten, there are 10 billion possible account numbers for every combination of the first six digits. Capital One does not have 10 billion accounts for each of the first six digit sets it owns. Capital One is big and bad, but I bet it does not even have 1 million current valid accounts for each of those 'sortcode' type sets.

And I think that if the money really did go against all the odds and reach another customer's valid account with no intervention from Capital One then the chances it went to an account where Capital One were unable to bring their big guns to bear and get it back are small too.

I think Capital One have been dilatory and all else that followed is their fault as a result of not jumping on the problem immediately as soon as you made them aware of it (just like the experienced ex banker wannabedebtfree said earlier).

See it through to the finish now and get your interest back.

If they won't play ball after a couple of polite tries, then tell them that in that case you will have to contact the Financial Ombudsman and then do it. It is a fairly simple process and the FO sometimes get started and write to the bank even on the strength of your first email! You will probably find that Capital One will cave in as the moment they are contacted by the Ombudsman about the file they will be charged a standard complaint fee of some hundreds of pounds I think, and they will then have to go to a lot of expense to respond officially.

This story should be a salutory warning to anyone doing bank transfers just by typing or writing a single sixteen digit number to identify the recipient account.

It is very very easy to make this kind of mistake, especially if you think you know all you need to know about balance transfers and are happy whistling off forms in the post and clicking "Submit" online !

I promise you, you will feel sick to the stomach every time you think of it until you manage to persuade the bankers to sort it out, so it is best avoided !

Good luck to the OP with getting the last bit back now!

YorkshireBoy

@peterbaker,

There hasn't been £1,200 of interest applied to the account.

OP says "I've still had to pay interest on the £1200 since it went missing in May..."

Whilst it may be 'significant' (£48 @ 15.9% APR), it isn't as bad as you perhaps thought.