CHAPS payment fail

Oscartwiglet

Just wondering how common this is. We made a CHAPS payment on Saturday and it failed to arrive at our solicitor on Monday. Numerous phone calls and the bank processed it again, solicitor finally has it. Thankfully we are not completing until the end of the week so had some time for this to be rectified. I am so angry with Halifax. I made multiple phone calls to the branch and they never answered, kept getting through to a call centre miles away, who said they were emailing the local branch, but nobody had even read those when they did finally call me back this morning. The bank are blaming it on a technical error. Is it worth putting this in writing as a formal complaint?

eskbanker

Oscartwiglet wrote: »

Is it worth putting this in writing as a formal complaint?

Depends what you expect the outcome to be - now that the money has arrived there's nothing more that can be done in terms of what you originally set out to achieve, but there's nothing to stop you complaining about the failure to achieve the same-day service level and the difficulties you experienced in contacting them. I'd expect them to refund the CHAPS fee and perhaps a small top-up for the inconvenience....

Oscartwiglet

Yeh, I am just angry at the poor customer service.

dreaming

As far as I know you cannot make CHAPS payments on a Saturday (or has it changed since I left work?). What you can do on the Saturday is request the payment be made (via the local branch) but this would not then be actioned until the Monday (or Tuesday if bank holiday). That's how it worked when I was in the banking industry, but of course it should have been made clear to you.

eskbanker

dreaming wrote: »

As far as I know you cannot make CHAPS payments on a Saturday (or has it changed since I left work?). What you can do on the Saturday is request the payment be made (via the local branch) but this would not then be actioned until the Monday (or Tuesday if bank holiday). That's how it worked when I was in the banking industry, but of course it should have been made clear to you.

OP's expectation, presumably based on info from the branch staff, was that the payment would arrive yesterday (a non-bank holiday Monday) so whether it was sent on Saturday or Monday doesn't really matter here, in the context of a same business day service....

Oscartwiglet

Yes, we were told it would be there by 2 on Monday.

dunstonh

We made a CHAPS payment on Saturday and it failed to arrive at our solicitor on Monday.

Similar to as mentioned above, back in my banking days you couldnt do CHAPS on a Saturday as they could only be done during the original banking hours (9am to 3.30pm Mon-Fr). Things change but as Saturdays are still not a clearing day, you would not expect a CHAPS to complete on a Saturday. But they can be keyed on a Saturday so they would arrive early on Monday.

A failure to arrive would either be that it wasnt keyed correctly (or at all) by the sending bank. Or it was not accepted by the receiving bank. If it was rejected by the receiving bank then you would expect to be notified the same day (Monday in this case).

Is it worth putting this in writing as a formal complaint?

A technical error is very generic. The CHAPS system is mature and not prone to technical failures. However, the term would include human error and that is probably what has happened.

You are clearly not happy as you wouldnt have posted here. So, on that basis, yes you should complain. If you do complain, then make sure you mention about how difficult it was to get it resolved with no-one taking responsibility for sorting it out and how important it was to get resolved quickly as it was a house move. The CHAPS payment was just the first failure in service. Had they sorted it quickly, it could have still been there a few hours later. The poor service and lack of ownership to the problem along with poor communication to you during a stressful period is actually a bigger failure than the failure of the payment itself.

Flobberchops

The branch almost certainly don't have the staff on hand to sit by the telephone fielding calls, so it doesn't surprise me at all that your attempts to call weren't successful.



By all means though make a complaint about the failed CHAPS payment - it was a large and/or important sum, caused distress, inconvenience of returning to branch to resolve, etc - I would be surprised if they don't offer you in the area of £25-50 as a gesture of goodwill.