Bank Accidentally Deposits $176M In People's Accounts on Christmas Day (cnbc.com) 41
"Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year," reports CNBC, "when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £130 million ($176 million) across 75,000 transactions."
The mistake happened when payments from 2,000 business accounts in the U.K. were processed twice, meaning some employees saw their wages double, while suppliers also got more than they were expecting.
The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a "scheduling issue" that has now been rectified. It is now trying to recuperate the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into bank accounts operated by rival banks. "We're sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients' accounts," a Santander spokesperson told CNBC...
Santander said it also has the ability to recover the funds directly from people's accounts.
The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a "scheduling issue" that has now been rectified. It is now trying to recuperate the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into bank accounts operated by rival banks. "We're sorry that due to a technical issue, some payments from our corporate clients were incorrectly duplicated on the recipients' accounts," a Santander spokesperson told CNBC...
Santander said it also has the ability to recover the funds directly from people's accounts.
But if you accidentally pay Santander twice (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s âoeoh our policy doesnâ(TM)t allow us to send a refund, sorry for your lossâ
Re: But if you accidentally pay Santander twice (Score:2)
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Finders Keepers is not really a thing (Score:5, Informative)
"If you were one of the direct deposit employees who woke up to an unexpected Christmas bonus, we apologize for any inconvenience getting your hopes up and then dashing them has caused. Please return the money or consider it your separation package."
Waaaa (Score:2)
Too fucking bad. I hooe they don't "recoup" that money.
You know what would happen if the situation was reversed.
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They'll get it back one way or the other. If they can't get the payment reversed; Direct Deposit agreements usually authorize the employers and the employers' banks the right to enter a Direct Debit in order to correct errors, even if it result in overdrafts. Alternatively, they can subtract the amount from their next Paycheck after this one, or Send the account holder a Bill to repay the erroneous deposit which they'd need to repay or face legal actions.
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Too fucking bad. I hooe they don't "recoup" that money.
You know what would happen if the situation was reversed.
Come on now.
Are you suggesting that affected employees wouldn't be getting an immediate correction if Santander's automated system had halved their paychecks by mistake?
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Wow, you're not very forgiving of human errors. Have you ever had a career?
For what it's worth, Canada has a national banking system. These things are reversible in seconds -- faster than any announcement could get published.
Doesn't matter if it's across banks, doesn't matter if you've withdrawn the funds, doesn't matter if you've closed your account. Welcome to a stable banking system.
While I know USA banks aren't the same, I'm confident that USA bank accounts have similarly-resulting constructs.
Spend it quick (Score:2)
"Santander said it also has the ability to recover the funds directly from people's accounts." Not if the account has a zero balance. Spend it quick and close the account.
Of course I'm kidding, I'm sure the bank would find some way to come after you.
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For what it's worth, I'm not actually sure they can so there's actually some sense in your point.
If you bank with them it's easier as they can just take it out, if you bank with someone else and got one of these payments and spent it then there's really nothing they can do I believe as your bank isn't going to want to piss off it's customers on behalf of Santander because Santander fucked up; that's ultimately Santander's problem to swallow.
Rival banks have said they'll try and return it for them but the ke
Re:Spend it quick (Score:4, Informative)
That is called theft of lost or mislaid property. Your brilliant plan will end up with you in prison (and the court will order all the funds returned). Great plan.
Re: Spend it quick (Score:2)
Common Class of Errors (Score:2)
Regular timed transactions that due to sloppy software practices get double executed. When I have seen this happen it has been double-billing of credit cards for monthly subscriptions.
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Indeed. Somebody fucked up here and not when that happened, but making it possible to happen in the first place. Cheap-ass IT.
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These will get reversed quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
When you sign up for direct deposit through your payroll provider, part of the fine print says that the they're allowed to reverse any erroneous payments and withdraw those amounts. That's exactly what's going to happen (if it hasn't already), and anyone who foolishly spent the money and doesn't immediately repay it is going to quickly find themselves quickly out of a job.
The bank certainly has egg on its, face but they don't look nearly as bad as Citibank did when they accidentally paid off their entire $900 million loan to Revlon.
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part of the fine print says that the they're allowed to reverse any erroneous payments
They can TRY reversing payments only if they catch it fast enough -- Christmas day was the 25th.. Most payments settle within about 2 days; it's too late to cancel an ETF payment now that the funds already cleared.
So if your direct-deposit is to a checking account that you have removed Overdraft 'protection' features from, and you automatically sweep all deposits to a savings account at a different bank to keep only $1
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If they can't reverse the payment, then it becomes YOUR responsibility to return to money. Failure to do so may result in a charge of theft of lost or mislaid property (or similar).
What if these are payrolls? (Score:3)
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But if you keep the money, you can be found with both civil and criminal penalties - theft. Criminal because stealing money is a crime, and civil to recover the money.
It's not a theft, because the prior owner of the money paid the money to your account; you had no control of it, they just sent you this sum when they technically were required to pay a lesser some. In case you didn't know... if you overpay a bill; not all companies will send you a refund for the excess, sometimes they will only grant
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Electronic payments in the UK settle in about 3-10 seconds, not 2 days.
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People in the UK don't "sign up for direct deposit through your payroll provider".
When you start a new job, your employer will ask for various details, and one of those is your bank account number. The only agreement you sign is your contract of employment, and it generally doesn't say anything about that.
A "scheduling issue" means.. (Score:3)
...what? That you intended to make those mistaken transfers on a different day? So what?
Re: A "scheduling issue" means.. (Score:2)
"Scheduling issue" is friendlier talk than: "our operating team messed up and sent the same batch file twice".
Better than another bank in the UK (Score:3)
"A number of Nationwide customers complained of delays receiving their wages on Friday following a payment glitch." [bbc.com]
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No, idiot. You are not punished for the bank making a mistake. You are punished for spending money you had no reason to believe was yours.
See now if they paid you in bitcoin. (Score:3)
Re: See now if they paid you in bitcoin. (Score:2)
This made the news because it was quite consequent, and on Christmas Day, but it happens and is quietly corrected many times a year, in different banks worldwide. Irrevocability means uncorrectability, and is only ok for thoughts experiments, not for real life.
Re: See now if they paid you in bitcoin. (Score:2)
When I give you cash, it is not revokable. See how that works? Some people would call that a very good thing. Who wants a bank or a vendor clawing money from your account whenever they please? Do you have to set up one bank account per employer?
Decades ago Saudi money landed in some accounts (Score:2)
The banks didn't hesitate to just take it bank, though the affected people protested at the lack of even a "by your leave". One went to court to claim at least the interest as a "parking fee". It was millions of dollars, IIRC, and back then interest rates made a difference. But the court didn't side with them.
There should be a penalty for such bank mistakes (Score:1)
There should be a penalty to the bank for such mistakes. A % of the amount should be OK.
Re: There should be a penalty for such bank mistak (Score:2)
If all employees agreed to keep it, they can't fire all employees. They should sent one group email back to management: inflation was 7% and we are keeping this extra amount as a yearly bonus to account for that. K thanks bye.