Hoping for some advice about what to do.
A few weeks ago I set up some automatic payments to all go in to my spending bank account, from the one I receive payments for work in to. 3 payments of £93.57, £1.65 and £2.27 which I all scheduled to go in on the same day around 4 days after (I did 3 seperate payments of relatively insignificant amounts as I miscalculated how much I was receiving and only realised after I'd authorised payments).
One would expect that my bank balance would go up with these 3 payments by £97.49. Instead it went down by £8.33.
The bank in question (Chase) are being irritatingly slow to get back to me. No pending payments were waiting to come out of my account and no pending payments have been actioned on the account - the call handler acknowledged this over the phone although I haven't got any acknowledgement over the phone. I haven't got my statement for this period yet but there's nothing in my transactions on the app to account for this. If I take my statement balance from last month, then manually add payments in, and subtract payments out it comes to £105.82 more than is being displayed as my balance.
I've badgered the bank about this but just keep being told it's "In review". I have a case number but no way to directly contact the team dealing with it. I just have to go through customer services who just say "someone will be in touch".
Is there anything I can do before 8 weeks in and contacting the financial ombudsman?
Many thanks in advance, as ever
Is there anything I can do before 8 weeks in and contacting the financial ombudsman?
I'd imagine you'll need to bank's response before you can contact the Ombudsman. Social media firestorm, or sit tight
How long have they had it 'in review'?
You sure Chase are not just rebranding the Post Office/Horizon...? 🤔
A quick Google finds that issues with Chase accounts showing incorrect balances and missing transactions is seemingly not uncommon
Raise a formal complaint, rather than just a query. They have regulatory SLAs for complaints where they must investigate and resolve within a few days
One would expect that my bank balance would go up with these 3 payments by £97.49.
One would expect that your bank balance would go up if they were the only transactions. Are you certain nothing has come out that you'd forgotten about?
Can't you just, like, view a statement? I've had several bank accounts and credit cards over the years, the only one I've been unable to get an immediate online review from is a building society which uses a passbook and still has my title listed as "Master."
Are you sure there isn’t an uncleared item (cheque) in the system that just hasn’t shown through to their online platform yet? Should be less of a thing with the cheque imaging used these days (vs paper being posted about)…..but you never know.
If nothing like that it seems very odd - I work for a different bank and anything within the bacs system will show on day 2 (day before it hits your account) as pending on the online banking system. Most banks work similarly.
I wonder if Chase (as a non uk main bank) aren’t direct members of all the clearing systems and are piggybacking off one of the uk domestic banks and that’s causing some delays on transactions.
Or Fujitsu designed their system…..
I see this with Santander, particularly when receiving money from my revolute business account which can take hours. I’ve just put it down to the way they’ve implemented the faster payment system with revolute. What I now do is move money from revolute to Halifax and from there to Santander & everything credits instantly.
Is that one of those internet banks?
It's this kind of thing where a branch is very helpful, much harder for someone to fob you off when you're stood in front of them, and you can stand there until you get an answer.
Anyway, as above, the complaints procedure should speed things up a bit
I see this with Santander. . .
Yep. Bunch of shyster who seem to punish me for having a legacy business account from when they took over Abbey National. Payments can take days to arrive in my account. I only keep the account running as I get free banking with it.
Thanks all for the responses and advice.
So the "few weeks ago" bit I said in my original post wasn't true. This was all payments scheduled for yesterday. I was a bit dramatic and emotional about it all yesterday so made that bit up for dramatic effect. I lied on the internet. Sorry.
As per advice from a few of you I put in a formal complaint. They initially said I couldn't put in a formal complaint because the relevant team were "looking in to it". It slowly dawned on me that them saying they were looking in to it should not be a reason not to let me complain, but they obviously realised this too as before I was able to protest I got an email saying my complaint had been logged with a reference number.
I received a phone call from the fella I spoke to on the phone with whom I initially raised the issue with yesterday morning. He said the payments team looking in to it had manually calculated all of my transactions and have indeed found a discrepancy - and think it's to do with the largest payment I had scheduled in to the account. They had admitted it was a problem on their end and it wasn't me being a lemon, or forgetting about a pending/scheduled payment from some weeks/months ago. I suppose I don't have this in writing yet, but the customer services representative phoning me back said this was all logged as an update on my case file at least.
I feel better about it now, and I'm lucky to be in a position where I can wait a little bit for the money - I don't need it to pay the gas/leccy/feed starving children etc. However, I'm still somewhat ambivalent about the fact that this even happened in the first place, and even though they've admitted fault, they haven't updated my account balance/put the money back in yet!
I've moved all my money out of this account back in to my other account now. I got enticed to them by the 1% cashback promo, but I've lost all trust in them now after this.
ambivalent <br /><br />
do you mean ambivalent? Personally I’d be alarmed or frustrated, maybe even outraged .
True, perhaps I'm being a bit too stoic and mild mannered about it. Possibly a reflection on my personality somewhat
When your complaint is either resolved or not resolved, shop them to the FCA. They get a £550 fine purely for you logging the complaint, irrespective of the outcome or status. I usually email them to say I’m doing this. You might get some sort. If offering back, which I gleefully accept, and then log the complaint anyway.
Seems odd, given the simple situation this sounds like, that Chase could have screwed up processing the transfer receipt so badly. There's no combination of processing those amounts inn different ways that could lead to an £8.33 deduction. There were definitely no other payments/transfer from the Chase account in that time? Hopefully they sort it soon, I guess they won't provide the exact detail of what happened unfortunately.
£8.33? Ha! Amateurs!
We left OVO in April 2020 for Octopus.
Our OVO account is closed but still accessible.
It shows £0.00.
OVO have recently sent a £0.05 debt off to a debt collection agency. FIVE PENCE. TO A DEBT COLLECTION AGENCY.
"knowideamatecantworkitounothingwecandoitsthesystem".
And you have to wait 8 weeks for the Energy Ombudsman to be interested.
