Standing order paid twice

Flugelhorn

I had a standing order paid every 3 months on the 30th of the month - so the bank paid it Friday and then randomly paid it again this morning. Spoke to the bank and they are going to recall / reverse it or something tomorrow but most concerning, didn't seem to have a clue as to why it had happened!

Fortunately I had enough in the account to cover it. Does this happen often and why does it happen?

MyRealNameToo

Certainly doesnt happen often, never happened to me.

Normally errors are caused by bugs in software which are most commonly found shortly after software updates are done. They can in principle be caused by human error too but this sort of thing you'd expect to be straight through processing with no human intervention.

Life happens sometimes, our worst one was a card updater service messed up meaning a bunch of customer's credit card details were switched with each other. Thankfully for us it only impacted letters being sent and some customers calling and the agents taking it seriously when they said the last 4 digits of the card in the letter didnt match any of the cards they held.

Turned out that we sent a list of 11,345 card numbers and they send back a list of 11,345 response codes but with no references etc and so the only checks we could do is that the count of records was the same. Coincidently their system screwed up and sent us the prior day's records again which happened to have the identical number of records so the system accepted it. Not something anyone had thought of beforehand or something that could have been tested for.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6653372/standing-order-paid-twice

Care to name the bank? These type of errors tend to happen in big batches so it's possible a lot of people have been effected.

Flugelhorn

RBS - good point, others may have had the same problem though lass I spoke to sounded genuinely bemused and went to speak to someone else

SiliconChip

Are you sure you haven't accidentally set up the SO twice for different schedules? Knowing something about RBS payment systems (although not recent knowledge) it seems like an odd error for the bank to make, I'd have expected two payments on Friday (or two today) rather than on separate days if there had been some sort of duplication.

One thing I would say is that if it is a bank error and it by chance only affects SOs paid every 3 months on the 30th then I'd expect that to be sufficiently unusual that we wouldn't see hordes of people reporting it.

retiredbanker1

The only thing I can think of is whether the second payment was a 'catch up' - are you sure OP that payment was made 3 months ago? Have you missed a payment at all?

SiliconChip

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866764#Comment_81866764

That might have been that case if it was a direct debit but much less likely (almost impossible I'd say) as it was a standing order.

Flugelhorn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866764#Comment_81866764

all the payments have been made and the one on Friday was the last one of the financial year

Flugelhorn

no definitely only one SO and it is now "retained" and noted that the final payment was 30th Jan - not clear at all why today's payment was triggered. It is over £1000 so not the sort of thing you do twice

retiredbanker1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866783#Comment_81866783

Sorry but you are wrong here.

In my time S/O were a pain for customers who paid weekly but run out of money before payday so one standing order would be missed and then on payday it would catch up.

Things might have changed but this was the TSB system.

SiliconChip

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866985#Comment_81866985

Given what we know about TSB systems I'm not sure that's a great example to give! While a catch up within a short time might be possible it certainly wouldn't happen after 3 months.