Bank Mistake

[rowanne]

On friday my husband went into our bank to withdraw �225.00 which he did, on saturday we got a telephone call from the bank cashier asking him what he withdrew that day. Not sure whether or not it was a hoax call and being busy with the kids we simply said, "well you should know, you at the bank have the receipt" however she persisted with the questioning and my husband (irritated by now) looked at his bank receipt and noticed that it had �25.00 on it rather than the �225.00 he withdraw. He realised why the lady was calling and simply said "well you should know, my receipt says very clearly �25.00, sorry very busy at the moment, goodbye" so at this point he has neither admitted or refuted the mistake. So our question is this, we have the receipt, this lady has clearly made a mistake, are we within our rights to keep the money or do we have to hand it back to the bank? Any advise would be much appreciated. Many Thanks

[Buenchico]

Section 1(1) of the Theft Act 1968 states: "A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to
another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and �theft� and �steal� shall be construed accordingly".

Section 5(4) of the same Act states: Where a person gets property by another�s mistake, and is under an obligation to
make restoration (in whole or in part) of the property or its proceeds or of the value thereof, then to the extent of that obligation the property or proceeds shall be regarded (as against him) as belonging to the person entitled to restoration, and an intention not to make restoration shall be regarded accordingly as an intention to deprive that person of the property or proceeds".

The combination of these two paragraphs means that you will be committing a criminal offence if you do not return the excess �200 (or, alternatively, agree to a deduction of �200 being made from the balance of the account).

Chris

[tellboy]

Of course it is completely without ethics. It is stealing. You would be the first one to whinge if it was the other way round drew out �50 and got deducted �500.

You are on a computer. They do go wrong.

Please tell us you are going to return the excess and enjoy a guilt free christmas.

[rowanne]

Hi all, thank you for your answers.

Shortly after we wrote this we telephoned the bank and have asked for a manager to telephone us to discuss the money and how it is going to be paid back. The cashier didn't even identify herself when she telephoned on Saturday morning so we have no name. So we asked for a phonecall before 10.00am in order to sort this out, to date we haven't received any call. As I write this, we are telephoning the bank again..to arrange a deduction of monies from our account - you would think they would be keener. We will keep you posted.

[tim2969]

Keep it and tell them to stick �200 i ask you.

[rowanne]

Thank you for the advise Tim, it was tempting let me tell you.

However, in keeping with the spirit of Christmas and wanting to go to heaven and all of that stuff, we managed to talk to the manager this morning and have agreed to them taking out the �200.00 from our account which they will do this morning. We told them how inconvenienced we were thinking we had more money in the account than we actually had, and guess what they said "we can increase your overdraft limit" hah, typical, isn't this just like banks eh!

[funnywebsite]

He needs to check his book or receipt because in future it could be the other way round and nobody would be ringing then. How can you prove it a week later you only asked for �25, got �25 and then someone accidentally typed �225. I was in the bank not long ago and the cashier was yawning non stop. Not a good sign.

[khana]

As it happens, if it was the other way around then the Bank ould be ringing around likely customers as well. When the cashier does not balance at the end of the day then regardless of if they are over or short then the Bank still records this in the hope that either they track down the mistake or the customer gets in contact. It does not go in to a big slush fund for the staff to have a party on !

[Uzoma]

Nowadays, banks keep a breakdown of the notes paid in as well as what they give out. Thanks for your honesty though - I can assure you that I've had many a sleepless night wondering why my till is short by a couple of hundred pounds. People lose their jobs over less I can assure - believe me, you've done more than just return some money so on behalf of that person - thank you. As for the big slush - not true - at least not for me!

[L1980]

I had a similar experience Rowanne - I had entered an express lodgement into an account and a week later I realised that none of this money had been put into my account. 300 pounds of this was cash and further amounts were cheques. When I called the bank, they immediately asked me for the receipt number. When I said that I didn't know where it was, they said that there was nothing that they could do about it. I frantically rang the bank where I put in the express lodgement and they said the same thing. I rang my mum who had to go searching in the bin for this receipt in order to get the money retrieved from the bank. Thankfully she found this and I rang the bank with the number on the receipt. We found out that the problem was that they made a mistake and put it in an account that I haven't used in over 3 years. It had a totally different sort code / account number. It was in a different city. Both banks eventually (a couple of days later) credited my account, so they paid me twice for this. It really frustrated me the way they did not try to do any investigation at the beginning. Now they are calling me and saying that they made a mistake and want me to authorise the withdrawal of the cash. I don't mind giving back what is not mine, but I am not in any hurry to hand it over since the other way around, they were not so concerned about me!! Eventually they will get it back, but not before I prove a point.