Bank Error in my favour, what should i do?!

jamesd

Scousebird, nothing prevents a company from putting illegal clauses in its contracts then having a court rule that they are illegal once the clause is questioned in court. Contracts don't grant the right to act illegally, regardless of what they say. instead those parts of the contract are invalid and don't apply.

This is why you'll often see contracts have a clause saying that if any clause is found to be invalid the rest of the clauses are to continue to apply - else the whole contract might be declared invalid based on the failure of one clause.

The general principle is simple: you can't write and enforce a contract to break the law: the courts will refuse to enforce such contracts.

Whether this applies to these contract terms is a factual and legal question for the courts to decide.

M_Thomson

siranswerer wrote: »

can the bank do this? surely it would be against the law for them to withdraw money from your account without youre authorisation?

Yes they can, if it wasn't your money in the first place.

itsallaboutyou

I've been in a similar situation - although not on a similar scale... my bank reclaimed a direct debit on my part (the payee took the payment 6 months after I had cancelled the DD!) and they deposited 2 payments of £13.99 to my account...

I just left it there, knowing full well that they'd take it back - which they did 7 days later...

Although I'd like to suggest a spending spree to the OP - it would be more prudent to leave it in the account as its likely in all probability that the bank will have it back....

siranswerer

i was asking, because, last week, my partner added 160 pounds to my bank account. the bank put in 1600!!!

i was all for telling them, wasnt my money after all, but they lifted it yesterday (monday).

now this p**sed me off. yes ok, the money wasnt mine, but i WAS going to tell them. how dare they lift money from my account without my say so?!

so, now, im closing that account with the branch. after i write and get all my charges back.

RayWolfe

Bet they'll be sorry to lose you.

rach29

siranswerer wrote: »

i was asking, because, last week, my partner added 160 pounds to my bank account. the bank put in 1600!!!

i was all for telling them, wasnt my money after all, but they lifted it yesterday (monday).

now this p**sed me off. yes ok, the money wasnt mine, but i WAS going to tell them. how dare they lift money from my account without my say so?!

so, now, im closing that account with the branch. after i write and get all my charges back.

What you are not understanding here is that for the mistake to happen the cashier who took the money in originally will have had a difference in her cash of £1440. Which will have shown as her till being short, which will have most likely meant she had to work overtime to look through all of her transactions looking for the one which was an error before she traced it & rightly removed the sum from your account. It a horrible feeling when your till is short & believe me for a sum that big can & does cause sleepless nights (although thankfully it's years since it happened to me)

Please remember when you talk about "The Banks" that most of the staff are just ordinary people like you & me simply doing their jobs.

Rant over

siranswerer

rach29 wrote: »

What you are not understanding here is that for the mistake to happen the cashier who took the money in originally will have had a difference in her cash of £1440. Which will have shown as her till being short, which will have most likely meant she had to work overtime to look through all of her transactions looking for the one which was an error before she traced it & rightly removed the sum from your account. It a horrible feeling when your till is short & believe me for a sum that big can & does cause sleepless nights (although thankfully it's years since it happened to me)

Please remember when you talk about "The Banks" that most of the staff are just ordinary people like you & me simply doing their jobs.

Rant over

i totally agree, and working in a customer service environment for many years myself, if it happened to me, id probably be dead of heart failrue.

my point is, there wasnt even any notification. it wasnt a letter, oh, sorry, we accidently did this, were now going to lift it, ok? sorta thing, they just liftd it. i totally agree it was a mistake on the cashiers part, after all, were all human, and they needded to rectify this, but not even a letter? or they have my number, a phone call? is my point. sorry.

ShelfStacker_3

siranswerer wrote: »

how dare they lift money from my account without my say so?!

What, imaginary money that isn't yours? How dare they!

siranswerer

ShelfStacker wrote: »

What, imaginary money that isn't yours? How dare they!

Actually, like the thread poster, ive been expecting a check for roughly that amount for a while. its just because i check my bank online, and the fact that my partner had just lodged the money that i knew.

i couldve spent it all, believing the money was mine, if i hadnt of checked, then they take it from my account again?

how dare they... :P

turkey_mike

Shame it's illegal to keep money paid into your account by mistake, April 1st yesterday so I thought it was an April Fools joke when I found that my employer had paid £21,000 into my account by mistake, after rubbing my eyes a few times I contacted my bank and told them that I would like them to send it straight back to where it came from, they said I must contact payroll on Tuesday and tell them they must claim it back from my account, maybe I will get a thank you bonus for being so honest with their mistake....I doubt it;)