Refund dispute query

moneypit37

After a long drawn-out dispute with a building company whose level of incompetence knows no bounds, we have finally reached the point where they recognise they need to refund us.

We made our payment of £4500 to the builder by bank transfer (faster payment, 2 hours) on a debit card and they confirmed at 10.45pm last night that their accounts lady (whom we believe to be entirely fictitious) would provide a direct refund back to the account we paid from.

At 9am today this refund had still not been received by the bank. When I called the bank they said payments in are never shown as 'pending' and would just appear in my account as soon as it had been received. They advised that if they were paying by a giro payment it could take up to 3 more working days to reach us.

Please can someone advise if giro payment is still a commonly used method of business/trade transaction and whether this different payment method is against money laundering regulations? At what point do we take this further legally (it has taken a month for them to say they are issuing it)?

[Deleted User]

However they choose to refund you, I can't see how you could be accused of money laundering. It's not like you paid them in blood-stained fivers.

They're paying the money into your account, which is fine.

Terry_Towelling

moneypit37 wrote: »

After a long drawn-out dispute with a building company whose level of incompetence knows no bounds, we have finally reached the point where they recognise they need to refund us.

We made our payment of £4500 to the builder by bank transfer (faster payment, 2 hours) on a debit card and they confirmed at 10.45pm last night that their accounts lady (whom we believe to be entirely fictitious) would provide a direct refund back to the account we paid from.

At 9am today this refund had still not been received by the bank. When I called the bank they said payments in are never shown as 'pending' and would just appear in my account as soon as it had been received. They advised that if they were paying by a giro payment it could take up to 3 more working days to reach us.

Please can someone advise if giro payment is still a commonly used method of business/trade transaction and whether this different payment method is against money laundering regulations? At what point do we take this further legally (it has taken a month for them to say they are issuing it)?

Which method did you use to pay the builder - Faster payment or Debit Card? You can't do it by both methods at the same time. Only when you confirm this can we make sense of your concerns surrounding the (so far, missing) refund.

Migster

I assume that the "bank giro" method mention is a reference to the old style BACS payments which operated over a three-day cycle. For personal customers, these have been replaced by Faster Payments, but businesses do still use them.

MDMD

Migster wrote: »

I assume that the "bank giro" method mention is a reference to the old style BACS payments which operated over a three-day cycle. For personal customers, these have been replaced by Faster Payments, but businesses do still use them.

Businesses do use BACS for salary payments but they also do use faster payments for one off payments. The limits are sometimes higher too

http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about-us/business-transaction

jonesMUFCforever

Assuming this firm is a smallish local company then payments made from their account would be made by faster payment.
IMO they would have to be a large PLC to still be using BACS.

Therefore I think they are stringing you along.

Terry_Towelling

We still don't have clarity as to whether the original payment was by Faster Payment or Debit Card.