Faster payment gone to wrong account

Cosmo983

Hi there 
Not sure if I’m posting this in the right place but I’m looking for some advice. I was given a refund if around £1500 from a large company last year. I provided my bank details but I got two digits mixed up and they advised they sent the payment. A few days later I contacted them to say I didn’t have it. After about a week they got back to me to advise they had sent it and I should have received it. I checked the account details and realised my mistake. The sort code was the same I had simply mixed up two digits. They told me to contact my bank to resolve it. I tried this but the bank said I’d need to get the sender of the payment to investigate. I went back to the company and asked them to do this. They took a few weeks and came back and said the payment cannot be recalled. They didn’t offer any further information. I had wanted to confirm if the account was valid so attempted to send £1 to it on my online banking. It was picked up as an invalid account right away and the payment was rejected. I contacted the company again and said can you please explain what happened to the money because the account is invalid. The company are a huge airline and said they couldn’t help any further and simply cut off correspondence at that point after providing me with a data subject access request but this didn’t provide any payment information. 

I suppose there’s a chance the account could have been valid and when the wrong person received the funds they spent or withdrew them and then closed their account quickly  thinking they wouldn’t be asked to repay it. 

I know there are now procedures in place to ensure the name matches the sort code and account number but I find it really hard to accept nothing can be done to reclaim these funds. 

Can anyone offer any advice of what else I could try? 

This is a lot of money to me. 

Thanks in advance. 

dunstonh

I suppose there’s a chance the account could have been valid and when the wrong person received the funds they spent or withdrew them and then closed their account quickly  thinking they wouldn’t be asked to repay it. 

Statistically unlikely but possible.  Account numbers are not issued in sequential numbers.   There is a formulae linked to the sort code.     e.g. an account number 123456xx would actually be account 123456 but xx could run as 00,01,02.   And nobody else would have 123456xx but you on that sortcode.  

You need to make a formal complaint to the airline.   Point out to them that the account number has been tested as shown not to  valid and that the bank that received it would have returned it.  By going to complaint, you bypass the call centre staff who are limited in what they can do.

colsten

May be use https://www.resolver.co.uk/ to file your complaint

phillw

I guess in part it depends on who the company is that gave you the refund

Cosmo983

dunstonh said:

I suppose there’s a chance the account could have been valid and when the wrong person received the funds they spent or withdrew them and then closed their account quickly  thinking they wouldn’t be asked to repay it. 

Statistically unlikely but possible.  Account numbers are not issued in sequential numbers.   There is a formulae linked to the sort code.     e.g. an account number 123456xx would actually be account 123456 but xx could run as 00,01,02.   And nobody else would have 123456xx but you on that sortcode.  

You need to make a formal complaint to the airline.   Point out to them that the account number has been tested as shown not to  valid and that the bank that received it would have returned it.  By going to complaint, you bypass the call centre staff who are limited in what they can do.

Hi thanks for reply. I did do that and wrote to CEO twice they passed to the complaints team and just told me that there was nothing that could be done. 

Cosmo983

phillw said:

I guess in part it depends on who the company is that gave you the refund

Hi it was British Airways 

phillw

Cosmo983 said:
Hi it was British Airways 

As it's been 8 weeks then you could go straight to https://www.cedr.com/consumer/aviation/complainnow/ (they appear to handle British Airways complaints). It might be worth phoning British Airways first and asking them the status of your complaint and telling them what you are going to do.

Thrugelmir

Cosmo983 said:

phillw said:

I guess in part it depends on who the company is that gave you the refund

Hi it was British Airways 

Complete nightmare. We ended up having to stay an extra night in Berlin last July at little more than a couple of hours notice. To this day still awaiting reimbursement. All the information we've been provided with us proved false. Bank must be fed up tracing spurious refund payments. 

born_again

Given it was a few weeks later when you tried and got invalid. Could mean that the account holder shut the account down and did a runner with your cash.

mgdavid

born_again said:

Given it was a few weeks later when you tried and got invalid. Could mean that the account holder shut the account down and did a runner with your cash.

Yes, the OP knows this - they offered it as a possibility themselves earlier in this (short) thread

Doh!

Cosmo983

born_again said:

Given it was a few weeks later when you tried and got invalid. Could mean that the account holder shut the account down and did a runner with your cash.

Possibly but its illegal to benefit from such an error.