The Bank's App (Nat West) has sent a transfer to a stranger. Their error!

Herbalus

Neil49 said:

I cannot believe that Nat West are going to hand over details of the account holder they say received the funds for them to ask for the money to be returned.

Whatever happened to the Data Protection Act? 

They would only do this with the account holders permission. The way this works is NatWest would contact the recipient of the funds (if a NatWest customer) and ask for it to be returned. Or if say a Barclays customer, NatWest contact Barclays and Barclays ask the recipient for permission to return the funds. 

Just because NatWest can request these details doesn’t mean (and won’t mean) they will share them with the person who sent the money.

jonesMUFCforever

Herbalus said:

Neil49 said:

I cannot believe that Nat West are going to hand over details of the account holder they say received the funds for them to ask for the money to be returned.

Whatever happened to the Data Protection Act? 

They would only do this with the account holders permission. The way this works is NatWest would contact the recipient of the funds (if a NatWest customer) and ask for it to be returned. Or if say a Barclays customer, NatWest contact Barclays and Barclays ask the recipient for permission to return the funds. 

Just because NatWest can request these details doesn’t mean (and won’t mean) they will share them with the person who sent the money.

If the customer that received the money in error is not going to pay the money back they are hardly going to give permission for any bank to give their name and address to a third party are they?

sausage_time

James_G_H said:

born_again said:

So did he type the account details in each time?
Or is it a payment with details already set up in the app?

My payment details are saved in his App. He sent £130 & it never arrived in my account, so tried again with £2 and that arrived immediately. It suggests a glitch on the £130 payment?

Let me make sure I understand.  Are all these true:

• Your son has you set up as a payee (on internet banking, will also be in app)
• You son has previously used these details to send you funds.
• You son sent you £130 using the same details, which did not arrive. 
  

Can you ask him to show you this on his statements?  Does it look identical to all other transfers to you?

Could you son have accidentally or intentionally sent it to someone else?

dunstonh

I would want to be checking your son's statement to see what the text entry says.   
The bank wouldnt have a leg to stand on if there was a highly unusual error of automation.  Yet the bank are are arguing the case.  Which suggests it is not an error at their end but an error at your son's end (selecting the wrong payee for example).

If you have seen the entry on the statement and are adamant that it is the banks fault and their complaint response is that it isn't then you should now be going to the FOS.

AstonSmith

This post raises an interesting question. Virtually all software has bugs / programming errors in it, be it in the operating system or an application - banking apps included.

What happens if someone encounters one of these bugs and suffers a loss because of it? And how would they prove it if they couldn't reproduce the bug?

eskbanker

AstonSmith said:

This post raises an interesting question. Virtually all software has bugs / programming errors in it, be it in the operating system or an application - banking apps included.

What happens if someone encounters one of these bugs and suffers a loss because of it? And how would they prove it if they couldn't reproduce the bug?

It all comes down to what can be demonstrated and the balance of probabilities - in this case, if OP's son can show that he definitely made a payment to OP's account, from data on the app and other sources such as online banking and statements, then clearly this is weighty evidence against the bank if it went astray thereafter.  It's unlikely that the actual low-level root cause of such incidents would be shared with customers, but to a certain extent it doesn't matter whether it's software bugs, human error, faulty processes, or whatever, it's the simple fact that money didn't reach it's destination that counts.

However, as dunstonh observes, the fact that NatWest are apparently challenging this would suggest that there's more to this than meets the eye....

born_again

AstonSmith said:

This post raises an interesting question. Virtually all software has bugs / programming errors in it, be it in the operating system or an application - banking apps included.

What happens if someone encounters one of these bugs and suffers a loss because of it? And how would they prove it if they couldn't reproduce the bug?

But Nat West will have proof of the account the £130 was sent to.
So even if it was a bug (highly unlikely) as it would have happened so often that it would already be public news.
Like others my, money is on a potential human error & sent to wrong account. Or as I have seen in another app and the checking of COP. It gives a nice big green tick if it is correct. Some people take this as payment sent... Sadly you need to press confirm for that to happen and a good few miss that stage.

jonnygee2

its just beyond my beliefs to accept a payment could be instructed to account 12345678 and debit his account, but not end up in 12345678 or bounce back etc.....hence I’m finding it hard to believe this particularly story. 

I don't know why this is beyond your belief. If you work on a banking customer service desk, faster payments going missing is one of the frequent enquiries you get. 

The money doesn't go directly from one account to the other, it's routed through several other accounts on the way, and there's a complex sequence of messages that get sent.

What is unusual is that it's ended up in a third party account, instead of just getting stuck in one of the banks holdings accounts. Not impossible this would be some sort of manual error somewhere (there are still some manual processes involved eg reconciliations) but certainly highly unusual.

alewin

Maybe the son only said he had sent the money, couldn't spare it. Then made up the story of it getting lost on the way.

It's a reasonable possibility, you never know.

Sea_Shell

Just thinking out load, in the case of the recipient using the switching service, maybe more than once, any payment made to an "original" account, may have to pass through several banks to reach its final account.

This should happen instantly (did for me), but I wondered if this had any bearing at all??

A break in the "chain" as it were?