Santander Christmas Eve Double Payments

VanessaJones123

On Christmas Eve Santander processed a banking file twice paying over £2m to individuals twice instead of once, it only went out of our business account once.
They now want to recover the money from the individuals, can they do this?
Has this happened to anyone else?  and why is there nothing on social media about this?

Penguin_

Of course they can recover the money as it was a mistake.

If it went out of your business account would you as a business like them to recover?

sheramber

Why would they not recover it? The people concerned must know they got double money. 

[Deleted User]

VanessaJones123 said:

They now want to recover the money from the individuals, can they do this?

Yes. The fact the money was received on Christmas Eve doesn't make it a gift. Normal rules still apply.

Prudent64

I have come across this too - over a hundred employees paid twice by Santander on Christmas Eve but only one set of funds debited to the company account. Must have impacted loads of companies.

VanessaJones123

Deleted_User said:

VanessaJones123 said:

They now want to recover the money from the individuals, can they do this?

Yes. The fact the money was received on Christmas Eve doesn't make it a gift. Normal rules still apply.

I think what I am trying to understand is how they can do this.  If I pay money into the wrong persons bank account, I have to get them to return it.  The other question is how can they do this if the money is already spent as we pay a lot of people who are paid weekly and whilst all have been informed what if they have spent the money already as they live hand to mouth??

[Deleted User]

They can do it, because it's their money and they want it back.

If the recipient chose to spend it, then they'll need to pay it back out of their own funds, making a repayment arrangement if need be.

Daliah

VanessaJones123 said:

Deleted_User said:

VanessaJones123 said:

They now want to recover the money from the individuals, can they do this?

Yes. The fact the money was received on Christmas Eve doesn't make it a gift. Normal rules still apply.

I think what I am trying to understand is how they can do this.  If I pay money into the wrong persons bank account, I have to get them to return it.  The other question is how can they do this if the money is already spent as we pay a lot of people who are paid weekly and whilst all have been informed what if they have spent the money already as they live hand to mouth??

You, like all other Santander current account holders, agreed at account application time that Santander can take the incorrectly credited money back without your permission.

If you have tried to be clever and spent/moved it already and are unable to repay it in one go, you'd better talk to Santander immediately and ask whether they might agree to a repayment plan that costs less than the overdraft fees. They don't have to agree to this, but if you ask nicely, they might be able to do something. If you don't ask, you'll be left with an overdraft. Be aware that overdrafts can be recalled in full at any time - something you have also agreed to at account application time.

GrumpyDil

VanessaJones123 said:

Deleted_User said:

VanessaJones123 said:

They now want to recover the money from the individuals, can they do this?

Yes. The fact the money was received on Christmas Eve doesn't make it a gift. Normal rules still apply.

I think what I am trying to understand is how they can do this.  If I pay money into the wrong persons bank account, I have to get them to return it.  The other question is how can they do this if the money is already spent as we pay a lot of people who are paid weekly and whilst all have been informed what if they have spent the money already as they live hand to mouth??

As above people agree to this but a couple of additional points.

Human error happens. I don't work for Santander but can think of a couple of scenarios where this type of mistake could happen. Accepting that mistakes/system issues can and will happen companies need to have the tools to resolve them.

I can accept someone being a little overpaid not noticing but in the case you describe where a payment tape (probably file but ...) was run twice then I would expect two identical entries to appear against the users account history and certainly for them to realise that they appeared to have been significantly overpaid.

born_again

They will just reverse the transactions. 

Lightning360

Tesco Bank did this with a transaction from my own account a few months ago. I realised that money shouldn't be there, didn't spend it, and then they took it back.