Paying a cheque into a closed account

potts8

Has anyone had the experience of paying a cheque into a closed account and what has been the response of your bank?
I bank with First Direct and we recently made the error of paying 2 cheques into a joint savings account which is now closed.
Their procedure has been to simply return the cheques to the bank of the people that wrote the cheques and not inform us at all about this.

It doesn't quite sit right with me as we still bank with them and they have all our details current and on file.

Is this standard practice?

movilogo

Yes.

If the target a/c is closed, how the bank would know to how contact you?

agrinnall

I must admit I can't find anything in the FD T&Cs that covers this situation. However, it may be that because the payment was to a closed account they were unable to link that deposit to your current customer details (I assume you have other open FD accounts), so they had no way to know how to contact you. In that case, sending the cheque back to the issuer seems like a reasonable action, especially if it was sent with a letter explaining why the return was happening.

Carrot007

If you have a live account with them and this was prviously linked with the savings (say viewable on the same logon) then is is a bit harsh.


Otherwise no, you would have complained when they deducted a fee for finding you would you not? (say £50 an hour and costs).

potts8

I do still bank with them, probably around 6 accounts with them in total between myself and my wife. As soon as I said the account number that it had been paid into they told me exactly when it was closed so I know it was linked to my current details as they retain the statements.
It just seems strange to me that they would do this but curious if this is the standard or something specific for FD?