I have a number of bank accounts, the longest standing being with one of the majors.
In the 40 years I have been banking with them I have never had an error on any of the statements and I or SWMBO are rigorous in our checks.
SWMBO checked the latest statement last night and pointed out that the bank had deducted £471.45 and against my cheque stub I had written £417.45 . I thought I had transposed the figures myself and really did not believe the bank could possibly make an error with their sophisticated systems .
Checking it out today on the phone with the lady at the bank it turns out to be their error - but they cannot rectify it at the branch and it now has to be corrected by a different department who will contact me in the next two days. As the cheque was written on the Second of July thats £60 I 've been down for five weeks.
SWMBO reckons I should ask for compensation - I see it as a human error . What do you guys feel?
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Calm down, you have not lost £60,you have lost the use of the £60 for a month.
If this has put you in the red or over your o/d limit and caused bank charges etc these should be refunded.
Loss of interest on £60 for a month @ current rates is a penny or 2.
Compensation - other than a refund of charges - you cannt be serious - the error is/was trivial.
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FB - I am perfectly calm and quite aware of the minimal few pence loss. SWMBO is the one getting aereated about it......
The fact is if we had not checked then I would have been down £60, even that is only a tank of petrol these days and frankly would not worry me one bit.
I just find it unbelievable that with the sophisticated computer systems and checks the banks have that something as simple as a keying error can still get through.....
Anybody else had such a bank error at all ?
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Banks are computerised but the initial entry of a cheque value is manual - hence the error
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So no -one in a bank double checks the initial manual entry? I find that hard to believe....
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Would you have been so animated, and determined to get it sorted if the error had been the other way around.....
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The amount is entered onto the cheque in magnetic ink by someone typing the value in. Human error. If we expected all such keying to be double checked then the costs would be passed on to us.
As for:
>> Loss of interest on £60 for a month @ current rates is a penny or 2.
I would not think it comes to even that much interest in a current account over a month.
But OP's point is very valid - had he not checked then he'd have lost the £60.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 12:31
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Things like this are always happening to me, the last case when when the bank staff commited a crinimal offence by ilegal selling me a credit card. I wrote to complain and they sent me a hamper. They know its cheaper than if the FSO got involved.
Had a few cheques go wrong too, the trick is to check your statement every day.
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>>They know its cheaper than if the FSO got involved.
The FSO has transformed complaint handling. They must be criminally inefficient. They charge the financial institutions for complaints handled, win or lose, and they arrive at the charges by dividing their costs by the number of complaints. The charge is currently £500.
The result is that savvy, and not always truthful, consumers who want a bit of compo know that if they demand say £250, with a threat to complain to FSO, there's a good chance the institution will just cave in and pay because it's cheaper.
I'm sure Helicopter wouldn't dream of doing this - but by the sound of it, his wife might!
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Sorry for being think but who is FSO? Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)?
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The Financial Services Ombudsman.
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FOS is the usual acronym. I picked it up from the Shaker!
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Yes - I do not like financial errors and would have made the bank aware as quickly as possible......
Last edited by: retpocileh on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 13:10
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>> Yes - I do not like financial errors ...........
I don't like financial discrepancies either. Every so often a "test transaction" of £1 is deducted from my online balance. It never gets cleared but nevertheless it results in my online balance being £1 short for about 10 days. I wouldn't mind so much if my online statement had an explanatory note whilst the £1 was missing from the balance. I know it's only a pound but I expect my balance to be absolutely accurate. The first time it happened it took me four phone calls to get an explanation from my bank.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 13:22
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Nice little earner there.
Some computer backroom boy(or girl) deducts £1 from a million or so accounts and repays the few who complain and just lets it grow for a couple of years, then bingo a life of luxury.
I wonder how many would notice !
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>>I expect my balance to be absolutely accurate.
I admire that. (Seriously). Every now and again I set out to be that diligent, but I always fail through lack of discipline and application. I shudder to think how much money I have lost out on over the years through not having that level of attention.
I had high hopes of my wife, but turns out here's a limit to her level of dedication as well.
I do know that on the occasions I have sat down and paid attention, I have frequently found an error, and I have never yet found an error where someone had charged me too little. Quite surprising how all these "honest mistakes" always seem to occur in one direction.
Whilst a "test transaction" wouldn't bother me in itself, it would annoy me very quickly if they couldn't instantly tell me what had happened when I queried it. Especially, and this was the original reason for writing a reply, since very common practice amongst those after stealing your money, is to try a small, trial transaction first on the basis that if they get caught, its only a fiver and the penalty is small, but if they don't get pulled up then the next transaction of squidrillions is much more likely to be safe.
And seemingly a bank will not simply let the £5 transaction go to trap them on the big one.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 14:44
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Had this happen to me once - think it was a cheque for 34 went through as 43 or something. HSBC handeled it very well - investigated and call back / credit within a couple of hours. No compo, but no need as all it took was a quick call.
I accept issues can happen, so if its quickly resolved and done well then I am happy
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i hate banks
ooh i feel better now
thanks
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>> i hate banks
>> ooh i feel better now
>> thanks
>>
Anyone would think it was the banks money.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 20:03
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So no -one in a bank double checks the initial manual entry? I find that hard to believe....
There is a check actually, without which there would be many more such errors.
The cheque has been paid in by someone, and totalled up on a credit slip. The cheques, and voucher for the cash that has made up the amount of the credit, are also keyed. The check is that they balance.
So the chances are there were two corresponding errors - chances are, whoever paid your cheque in (or possibly somebody else if vouchers were batched - it's 32 years since I did this, things have possibly changed) has been credited with £54 too much.
They will probably just write this one off. In the 'old days' when banks were probably a bit more finicky about small matters of accuracy, half a dozen people might have sat all day with a pile of vouchers looking for the error - I have been one of those people - strangely, I left domestic banking...
Incidentally, anyone in a bank looking for a £54 error would immediately suspect a transposition of figures - the error is always divisible by 9.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 5 Aug 10 at 20:15
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does anyone still put theitr takings in those leather bags and put them in the nightsaves?
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I've made a couple of complaints to my bank over minor things and immediately got something like a £25 credit. I suppose it's cheaper and easier for them to do this, rather than go through an official complaints procedure
How much would they have charged you if you'd exceeded your overdraft by this amount?
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To buy or house recently needed two CHAPS payments at £25 a time. First never charged. Second a bit later (same branch) no charged either. I have not queried for obvious reasons - not that I saved £50 but someone might be in trouble. I spent a lot that month.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 6 Aug 10 at 00:10
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It`s our Boat clubs building society that gets me! - if i have a bill to pay, for say £200, i go and make a cheque withdrawal, i.e, they(B.S) make me a cheque out to whom i have to pay, and as they pass me the cheque, they deduct the £200 from the balance in our book. If, for whatever reason. the recipient never cashes that cheque, the money never re-appears in the account! it "disappears"!!!!
I once questioned this procedure, explaining that in Banks the amount isn`t deducted until the cheque is presented and clears! but was told that the B.S treat a cheque withdrawal the same as a cash withdrawal! - got nowhere! and it still goes on! does your B.S operate this way?
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>>does anyone still put theitr takings in those leather bags and put them in the nightsaves?
One of my shops does....
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I have been one of those people too - you didn't get to leave till it all balanced... and it would have been about 32 years ago too.
Holiday job whilst at university. I used to earn £22 a week, in central London.
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That's why you ask for a receipt when you pay in cash or cheques. You can then query the error there and then!
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Yes teabelly - I always like a piece of paper , a receipt , statement or cheque is always good..... I approve expenses at work and the staff know that no receipt = no expenses....
The bank in question just reported a billion plus profit this week.....as I originally posted the branch cannot deal with the problem themselves but no-one has come back to me yet from their 'department who deal with the errors' which they promised would be in touch within two days. They have until 10 am tomorrow....
I just wonder what will happen when the banks start doing away with cheques as they are trying to do .....
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I had a letter from my credit card company nearly three months ago, out of the blue, telling me they had been wrongly charging me a monthly payment insurance premium for the past eight years, because I cannot be covered if not a UK resident. They said the system had failed to notice my new address was outside the UK. They said they would refund the premiums, together with interest, and asked for confirmation of my bank account and sort code for the payment.
Since then I have written asking for an update, with no response, and their help line - when I can get through - keeps telling me they are waiting for confirmation of the amount from HSBC, who took the original premiums.
Is there anything I can do to find out exactly what happened and speed up the refund process? I thought I might ask Jessica whatshername at the Telegraph to help, but there must be lots of people who need her help more urgently than me.
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Mike - tell them they have had plenty of time to resolve it, and if it is'nt resolved by X date then you will ask the FSA to investigate. Most banks bend over backwards to avoid FSA involvement, and the threat may speed things up.
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>> The fact is if we had not checked then I would have been down £60,
>> even that is only a tank of petrol these days and frankly would not worry
>> me one bit.
>>
Oooh! hark at you moneybags!!
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I had been running a bank loan from the Halifax for many years. Just to upgrade the car or caravan or whatever. It was usually about £10k over 5 years.
The loan was often re-negotiated early and a new one taken out to settle the old one as part of the deal.
The last time, about 3 yrs ago, the very pleasant young lady who did all the arranging noticed that I'd been paying for insurance on all the previous loans, which I couldn't use because I was retired.
She set the wheels in motion to get all the premiums and interest refunded and within the month I found over £6500 credited into my account.
Top marks to her, unlike Mike's lot. She needn't have said a word !
No loans now apart from a small figure on CCs which are settled on-line when the statement arrives
Ted
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A volunteer in our place was pensioned off from his previous job due to ill health.
Received a letter from the HR dept of his previous employer last week advising that they had just noticed that his pension they had been paying was the wrong amount and they owed him £34k in back pay. How did he want it paid?
It was literally that, a 2 paragraph letter ! He nearly binned it as junk mail!
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...and they owed him £34k in back pay...
I can't top that, but we once sold a Renault 5 Gordini to a good customer who was trading in one he'd bought three or four years earlier.
Not sure of the precise figures, but the loan company had continued to take monthly payments on his old car long after the loan had expired.
This meant his new Gordini was already half paid for.
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Twice in the past few years the Halifax has demanded a charge from me based on its own accounting errors.
In each case I informed the bank staff member I spoke to that, as it was the bank's own mistake, it should pay ME the amount of the unwarranted charge it requested as compensation for my wasted time.
There was no quibble in either case and the money was paid directly into my current account plus, in one case, an amount of income tax that shouldn't have been deducted..:-)
If you don't complain, banks won't take steps to help prevent errors occurring again.
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Bank Error - Falkirk Bairn
