Sending money to the wrong bank account

MSE_Amy

Sending money to the wrong account guide.

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pmduk

I feel you should have made more emphasis on checking statements regularly. Additionally not making a second payment before checking the first has arrived.

grumbler

MSE wrote:

Further complications can arise if the person has spent the money as the bank cannot take money out of the person’s account if it means they will become overdrawn.

This sounds like they can if the money is in the account. AFAIK, the fact remains that they cannot, and the overdraft makes no difference whatsoever.

MSE wrote:

OK sounds good, but what if I'm not happy with the outcome? If you follow this procedure and you’re still not satisfied with the outcome you can first of all follow your bank’s formal complaints procedure. Banks are required by law to have a written complaints process which will let you know how to make a complaint. If you can't find details on your bank's website, ask it to send it to you. The bank then has eight weeks to respond to your complaint. If you're unhappy with the outcome, you can then go to the Financial Ombudsman. It can help sooner if your bank has sent you a rejection letter suggesting you use the Ombudsman.

Complain about what? Banks are powerless if the recipient refuses to give the money back. And how can the FOS help? By making the bank to pay their own money?

MSE wrote:

If you’ve sent money to the wrong bank account and the person who receives it is refusing to give it back and the bank is having no luck getting it back for you, then you could take them to the small claims court for up to £10,000.

It would be nice if in the 'guide' you explained how to sue the person without knowing their name and address or how to obtain this information when the banks refuse to give it because of the ill-thought and short-sighted DPA.

eskbanker

grumbler wrote: »

This sounds like they can if the money is in the account. AFAIK, the fact remains that they cannot, and the overdraft makes no difference whatsoever.

If the recipient refuses to act then yes, it makes no difference. However, there was an example of where a recipient of such a payment consented to its return but the bank refused because it would take the account back into the red, see https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5047660, although as I read that one, the bank chose not to return the money rather being obliged not to.

grumbler wrote: »

It would be nice if in the 'guide' you explained how to sue the person without knowing their name and address or how to obtain this information when the banks refuse to give it because of the ill-thought and short-sighted DPA.

Agreed! This thread from last week was effectively asking that very question - it's all very well knowing someone is in the wrong but if you can't find out who it is then it's difficult to actually do something about it!

grumbler

I think "back into red" meant into unarranged overdraft, not just "overdrawn" as per the 'guide'.

colsten

pmduk wrote: »

I feel you should have made more emphasis on checking statements regularly. Additionally not making a second payment before checking the first has arrived.

I agree wholeheartedly. And a lot more emphasis even on what to do to avoid making payments to the wrong recipient in the first instance. I am not saying it is impossible to send money to the wrong recipient - I once sent £14K to my architect instead of to my builder (doh!) - we do need the "it happened, what do I do now" - - but there are many ways to reduce the risk, such as

• sending £1 test payments before sending the main amount
  
  
• deleting payees that you don't pay regularly (you can only
  make a bank transfer to someone who is already on your payee list )
  
  
• giving each payee on your list of payees a meaningful name, so you can identify the right person yourself
  
  
• remembering that names aren't used in the actual transfer, just sort codes and account numbers
  
  
• not paying by bank transfer but instead paying by debit card, credit card, PAYM, or even by cheque
  
  
• double-checking the confirmation screen each bank always presents before you have to press the "confirm" button
  

norm_

The simplest solution would be to make the payee name on the account a key component for the payment to go through. It would stop 99.9999% of errors.

Thrugelmir

Makes you wonder why people don't use cheques for large sums.

colsten

norm_ wrote: »

The simplest solution would be to make the payee name on the account a key component for the payment to go through. It would stop 99.9999% of errors.

Unfortunately it is not, as there are literally infinite numbers of ways to spell an account holder's name.

People would be up in arms if they had to specify the correct account holder name in a Faster Payment, Standing Order or Direct Debit, as there are many permutations (John Smith, John Smyth, Mr J Smyth, Mr J.M. Smyth, John Michael Smith etc etc etc etc etc etc etc)

Why do you think that if people cannot specify a correct sequence of numbers they would be able to specify a correct sequence of letters?

windup

Could be solved easily by introducing a checksum or checkdigits by hashing the, sort code, and account number together, eventually with the name, the user can be alerted to the error before they hit go. If they don't hash the name, then only the front end of a banks website needs changing.

eg multiply sort x account number, checksum = last 5 digits of answer. if that doesn't match what has been supplied by the destination bank, alarm bells should ring.

colsten

windup wrote: »

Could be solved easily by introducing a checksum or checkdigits by hashing the, sort code, and account number together, eventually with the name, the user can be alerted to the error before they hit go. If they don't hash the name, then only the front end of a banks website needs changing.

No technical approach in this world will prevent people from sending money to A when they were meant to send money to B.

Just like nothing will prevent people from ringing a wrong number. Or making any other mistake.