Bank transfer to the wrong account

Vince1974

I recently transferred a rather large sum to another bank account. Unfortunately the intended recipient of the money had given me an incorrect sort code. To make matters worse the combination sort code/account code did happen to exist.

The money stayed within my own bank (NIB) and is now in somebody else's account. I called the bank and they are "looking into it". They apparently called the recipient but got no reply/call back. They then sent a letter, which is now one week ago and still no luck.

Apparently if this person replies it is still on a voluntary basis that the money would be returned, which seems ridiculous to me.

NIB is now going to send the recipient a second letter, in the hope that that would change things. NIB's default reply seems to be: there is not much we can do.

I transferred it to a named person who is not the recipient, should NIB not recognise this as an error and just return the money?

Is there anything else I can do?

phormium

Not a thing! You are relying on the goodwill of the person whose account it was transferred into. I did the roughly the same thing, transferred money using wrong sort code, correct account number, unfortunately there was an account with that number at the branch whose sort code I used. I used to think bank account numbers were not repeated but they are. Anyway contacted bank and as you have found out all they can do is try and contact the customer who now has the money. Bank's attitude is they have done nothing wrong so cannot correct it, the transfer error was your own unfortunately.

Luckily I got mine back, the customer was understanding and signed the withdrawal form needed to transfer the money back to me.

freeze4real

unfortunetaly what the above postal said its truem but I suggest posting this i the legal forum to see what advice they can give you.

seamus

phormium wrote: »

You are relying on the goodwill of the person whose account it was transferred into.

Well not really. If someone receives an erroneous transfer into their account, they are required by law to make a reasonable attempt to locate the owner and return the money to them.

In 99% of cases, this will involve contacting the bank to report the erroneous transfer, who can then return the money to its rightful owner.

Where the person fails to contact the bank or respond to request to return the money, the money's owner must go to court to get a court order requesting the other person's details, at which point they can then initiate legal proceedings against that person for the return of the money. You would be almost guaranteed to win this case provided that you can show the recipient had no rightful claim to the money (i.e. you didn't owe them money).

Receiving money into your account doesn't make it "yours", and likewise accidentally sending money to the wrong account doesn't mean it's lost.

VB1962

Seamus is absolutely correct - all that I would add is that you maintain strong pressure on your bank to follow up on getting the money back since striking while the iron is hot is vital here.

Best of luck.

qwertz

What's the exact timeframe between transferring the money and discovering that the details were wrong? Also, when exactly did you contact your bank and norify them of this error?