Tracing a BACS payment

[speckytecky]

Anyone know how you trace where a BACS payment has actually been paid to?

 

I'm treasurer of an organisation and a dear chap tells me he made a total of three payments one last September and two this month to an account I administer and indeed his bank statements show three payments made using the name of the account as reference but none of them has actually surfaced in the account I'm holding?

 

The Reference name is pretty distinctive so I'd have thought if he got his digits scrambled a tad the holder of the receiving bank account would have noticed?

 

My Googling for an answer has been fruitless.

[jmak]

AFAIK the banks don't even check the account name.... Quite a regular source of complaints.

 

You can't do anything - he can ask his bank for evidence of where they sent his money (most likely to the account he gave the number and sort code for).

Assuming it's gone to the wrong account, the person who received it is legally obliged to give it back, but it can't be taken back by the bank. If they don't give it back when asked, the only option is to take them to court. As the intended recipient, none of this is your responsibility - you are still owed the money.

[Oddbod]

Anyone know how you trace where a BACS payment has actually been paid to?

 

I'm treasurer of an organisation and a dear chap tells me he made a total of three payments one last September and two this month to an account I administer and indeed his bank statements show three payments made using the name of the account as reference but none of them has actually surfaced in the account I'm holding?

 

The Reference name is pretty distinctive so I'd have thought if he got his digits scrambled a tad the holder of the receiving bank account would have noticed?

 

My Googling for an answer has been fruitless.

 

He'll have to get his bank to source the payments, not you… (so ditto last poster)

You can only confirm payments at your end… not do his donkey work (putting it politely)

The reference is just for his records… it doesn't even show up during the transaction.

[speckytecky]

Thanks for the replies - might as well close this one now. With the planned demise of the humble cheque in Oct 2018 - I believe, I think this sort of thing is increasingly likely to become a problem. In this particular instance, I can see from what the chap has shown me that he set the Standing Order up via telephone banking and as there is no indication of end bank sort code or account on but just the reference he used I guess an all-important digit was transposed and the money landed in someone else's account and has been un-noticed or just accepted as a bonus.

[mikeprice]

Some years ago I received some money 'unexpectedly' - presumably by someone doing the same thing

 

At the time I didn't notice but some time later the bank just took it back with no notice - which made me overdrawn

 

According to the bank - they are allowed to do this if they discover a payment has been made to your account by mistake - this may have been changed now but at the time there appeared to be nothing I could do