Bank Charges

[stujwright]

Bit of a strange one- i have a bank account whereby they link a savings account to my current account and anything left over at the end of the month gets transferred to the savings account.

I found out that two months ago, �180 was put into the savings account by mistake, apparently the savings account number is recycled from an old account that was closed 10 years ago. Basically, this bloke was able to pay a cheque in using his old card and they are looking to me for the money back, which has already been spent. I accept that i should be more careful checking my statement but surely i have an argument here, that they have been negligent in letting someone use an old card to pay money in? do i have any case to argue? any advice would be appreciated.

[dzug]

You have no case to argue. If you keep the money you will have stolen it.

You should be able to pay it back over a reasonable period however.

[kazza12345]

i agree with the above ... if your money had gone into the wrong account, you wouldn't just expect that person to spend it and you to have none, would you?
I think your position id legally indefensible (as well as morally)

[dancecaller]

Morally,a lot of people would say the bank should not have let this happen.
They should compensate the other bloke.
I think I would suggest paying back part of it when I could afford it - maybe when there's money left over at the end of the month.
Banks often give a small amount of compensation (say �20) when they make a mistake, so you may not have to pay it all.
Good luck.

[kazza12345]

i don't really see how the bank could have prevented it happening ... after all if someone turns up with some cash that they want to go into bank account number 12345678, how are the bank supposed to divine that the they dont really want the cash to go to that account at all?

[kazza12345]

if anything, it's the silly person with the 10 year old account who suddenly used it thats at fault ... but even then it was accidental, and as i said, if you made a mistake, you would expect your money back

[flipflop104]

Surely the old owner of the said account must have closed the account, therefore, they are the one at fault as they must have known they'd closed the account.

I've got an account that I haven't used for 10 years or more (it has about 42p in it) and I don't expect the bank to just recycle the account number until I notify them or they notify me that they're closing the account and sending me the money in some form or another.

However, I'm not saying that you shouldn't pay the money back - it wasn't yours but you made a mistake.

I would be careful though because if the person with the old 10 year acct thinks they can still put money in the account, maybe they think thay can talke money out of it!!