Lloyds Bank Lost Multiple Incoming Payments

lochgarman

Hello, I am new here and in a rather bad way due to the failure of my bank.  I have a sterling current account with Lloyds Bank International (based in Jersey) and due to a family health emergency I had to send seven (7) payments of €2000 each, from my Republic of Ireland Euro current account to my Lloyds account - all made via SEPA.

The payments were made out to Lloyds from my Irish bank on 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 March 2024 - all €2000 each = €14000.

Despite being sent via SEPA , it took a whole week for three (3) of the payments to credit my Lloyds account, while the remaining four (4) payments have disappeared into thin air.

I did a trace from my Irish bank which confirmed all the payments are with Lloyds.  Neither bank has held up any monies due to security or money laundering concerns, etc. and no blocks or restrictions are on either my Irish or Lloyds account.

The problem with Lloyds is that I have had dozens of phone conversations every day with helpful customer service agents, plus filed a formal complaint, but the Lloyds Payments Team which is apparently based in Birmingham simply doesn't bother to respond to numerous messages sent on my behalf by their own Lloyds agents over days and weeks.

This Payment Team is apparently uncontactable by phone even by other Lloyds staff, so as the customer I have been left stranded in limbo due to the way that at a corporate level Lloyds has constructed its rubbish communications between its own staff and its Payments Team staff.

Since this situation with €8000 worth of money gone missing has caused me severe distress and alarm in the middle of a family health emergency, I was wondering what redress and compensation customers are entitled to in a situation like this.

I have now filed a complaint with the Financial Services Ombudsman given that a significant failure in this delay lies in the way Lloyds Payment Team has been constructed by the bank to be uncontactable by phone even by their own staff, and this Payments Team simply don't bother to reply to messages sent to them by Lloyds staff.  But I understand that Lloyds needs to conclude it's complaint first before the Ombudsman can fully get involved.

But this leaves me in limbo, money lost and considerable distress and alarm.  Any advice would be warmly appreciated, thanks all.

eskbanker

lochgarman said:

I have now filed a complaint with the Financial Services Ombudsman....

Just to be clear, you're presumably dealing with the Channel Islands one, not the UK one?

https://www.ci-fo.org/

i.e. the fact that the bank of which you're a customer deals with another group subsidiary that happens to be UK-based doesn't bring the UK FOS into the equation.

km1500

I find it hard to believe that an internal department is not contactable AT ALL by phone by ANYBODY ELSE at Lloyds

are you sure you are being given the right information?

what happened to your complaint did you use this form to complain

https://www.lloydsbank.com/islands/personal/contact-us/islands-complaint-form.html

does the channel Islands have the equivalent of the UK small claims procedure?

TheBanker

lochgarman said:

Hello, I am new here and in a rather bad way due to the failure of my bank.  I have a sterling current account with Lloyds Bank International (based in Jersey) and due to a family health emergency I had to send seven (7) payments of €2000 each, from my Republic of Ireland Euro current account to my Lloyds account - all made via SEPA.

The payments were made out to Lloyds from my Irish bank on 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 March 2024 - all €2000 each = €14000.

Despite being sent via SEPA , it took a whole week for three (3) of the payments to credit my Lloyds account, while the remaining four (4) payments have disappeared into thin air.

I did a trace from my Irish bank which confirmed all the payments are with Lloyds.  Neither bank has held up any monies due to security or money laundering concerns, etc. and no blocks or restrictions are on either my Irish or Lloyds account.

The problem with Lloyds is that I have had dozens of phone conversations every day with helpful customer service agents, plus filed a formal complaint, but the Lloyds Payments Team which is apparently based in Birmingham simply doesn't bother to respond to numerous messages sent on my behalf by their own Lloyds agents over days and weeks.

This Payment Team is apparently uncontactable by phone even by other Lloyds staff, so as the customer I have been left stranded in limbo due to the way that at a corporate level Lloyds has constructed its rubbish communications between its own staff and its Payments Team staff.

Since this situation with €8000 worth of money gone missing has caused me severe distress and alarm in the middle of a family health emergency, I was wondering what redress and compensation customers are entitled to in a situation like this.

I have now filed a complaint with the Financial Services Ombudsman given that a significant failure in this delay lies in the way Lloyds Payment Team has been constructed by the bank to be uncontactable by phone even by their own staff, and this Payments Team simply don't bother to reply to messages sent to them by Lloyds staff.  But I understand that Lloyds needs to conclude it's complaint first before the Ombudsman can fully get involved.

But this leaves me in limbo, money lost and considerable distress and alarm.  Any advice would be warmly appreciated, thanks all.

BIB - you can't know this for certain. They wouldn't necessarily tell you.

Hard to know for sure, but were the three payments that arrived the first three you sent?

[Deleted User]

km1500 said:

I find it hard to believe that an internal department is not contactable AT ALL by phone by ANYBODY ELSE at Lloyds

are you sure you are being given the right information?

what happened to your complaint did you use this form to complain

https://www.lloydsbank.com/islands/personal/contact-us/islands-complaint-form.html

does the channel Islands have the equivalent of the UK small claims procedure?

Court proceedings are very premature and will take several weeks at best - as a side note, neither the Channel Islands or UK have a small claims procedure.

It's almost certain that the OP has triggered some kind of anti-money laundering / anti-fraud check by sending seven payments of €2000 to themselves.

lochgarman

Thanks for all your kind responses.  Very helpful.

The current position is that the Lloyds International (Jersey) Complaint Handler came back with a response confirming that:

* The monies aren't held up in the system for any money laundering or security reasons

* That she "assumes" that the monies are simply in the ledger of the Lloyds holdings account and need someone to "manually retrieve" them to credit them to my account

* She tried to suggest that while the IBAN was correct I might have put in the SWIFT/BIC Code wrong.  I retorted sending screenshots from my Irish bank account showing there is NO FIELD FOR SWIFT/CODE ONKY IBAN and that my account only allows you to stand money within the SEPA Zone which includes the UK and Channel Islands

* To confirm, YES, it really is the case that the only way Lloyds staff can communicate with the Inbound Payments Team in Birmingham is via emails and messages -- there is no facility for them to speak with that team, which I find extraordinary.

* In the meantime, one further payment out of the 7 payments I sent did arrive so someone did eventually bother to credit it to my account, but 6 payments are still missing after well over a month

* The Channel Islands Financial Ombudsman sent a nice letter and I had a good chat with the nice man on the phone.  He confirmed that they have concluded that there is a case for Lloyds to answer and the case has been passed to an Adjudicator to investigate and demand documents from Lloyds.  He promised my money has not been lost, but the investigation will have to run it's course.

For both UK and Channel Islands customers sending monies from abroad to their domestic current account, there seems to be a real issue with an Inbound Payments Team in Birmingham who no one can reach on the phone, not even their own colleagues, and who appear to be lackadaisical about replying to the emails that their colleagues send them.

And even more lackadaisical about making the effort to locate customers' money in their ledger/holding account or whatever it is...

lochgarman

Sorry typos in my last message...

7 payments were sent last month...4 have to date arrived....3 are still missing