AB writes: Last month I logged on to internet banking to discover that £38,000 had been transferred into my account. The money is still there. Will this money ever be legally mine — for example, if a certain period of time passes with nobody claiming it? If the bank discovers the error, will it have to make a request before it takes the money out of my account again? If I don’t tell the bank of the error, what will be the likely outcome?
I hope you realise that someone, somewhere, is worried sick about what has happened to his or her missing money, and I’m surprised you waited even long enough to e-mail me before owning up to the bank.
For the record, the money never becomes yours, legally. You are allowed to spend any interest earned on the sum while it remains in your account, but if you spend any capital, or try to move it to a different account, this is illegal and tantamount to theft.
In such situations, if a bank tracks the money down, it cannot simply take it back from your account, though it can request it. Nor is it allowed to give your details to the poor person who has lost out. Their only option is to report it to the police, who can then force the bank to disclose your details, and then that person can take you to court.
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The error, incidentally, may well not be of the bank's making — it may be that someone got their account number or sort code wrong, and the bank would not know a mistake had been made. The Monopoly board (“bank error in your favour: collect £200”) has a lot to answer for. You are not getting one over the bank by keeping the money — but harming (for all you know) an individual who is now quite desperate to get it back. Tell the bank now.
Paperbacks get an inflated book value
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MG writes: My household insurance covers £4,000-worth of mainly paperback books that we would not, and could not, replace if they were stolen or destroyed. Likewise we have £2,000 of LPs and cassettes and £1,000 of videotapes, most of which we could not replace in the same media. Indeed, we already have CD and DVD replacements of our favourites. Can you find an insurance company that will allow me to ignore such articles overtly or covertly, with the appropriate reduction in premium?
Sounds to me like you need to make a good few trips to your local charity shop. Seriously, this just illustrates what a fuzzy business house contents insurance is. Householders can, in effect, name their own sum assured, and hence dictate the level of premium they are asked to pay. The crunch comes at claim time: any large claim may well mean that the insurance company sends a loss assessor to your home, who will then make a judgment as to whether you were adequately insured. If he or she decides you were not, an insurer may have two options: one, to reduce its payout by the same proportion as it judges you were underinsured, or to pay out only on a “wear and tear” basis, rather than “replacement as new” — which is likely to mean a good deal less.
However, insurers these days are moving towards a looser way of doing things, offering “blanket cover” of a minimum of, say, £30,000 or £50,000 for contents, depending on the size of your house, without requiring that policyholders tot up the value of everything they own.
The best advice I can offer is the usual, boring, “shop around”, and not be too fixated on the precise level of the sum assured. You may well find that you can cut costs in any case.
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Where there’s a will there’s no way
JM writes: My husband committed suicide in May after suffering mental illness for many years. In 1978, we made a joint will, which was lodged with a branch of Midland Bank for safe-keeping. I found the receipt for this in our paperwork, which I gave to my solicitor. He contacted the bank, which told him it could not find the will, and said that in any case it does not keep any documents that are more than 25 years old.
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This is nonsense. Banks cannot unilaterally get rid of documents just because they are a certain age. HSBC, which took over Midland Bank, says its policy is to keep such documents indefinitely. If it has lost contact with the individual concerned, it will, after five years, write to the solicitors who drew up the will, but if it does not hear back, it will still keep the documents.
Unfortunately, in your case, HSBC has located a “given up receipt”, signed by your husband, which shows that he withdrew the wills in October 1987. It has now informed your solicitor of this.
Halifax delays in opening account
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LS writes: I have been trying to open a Halifax Regular Saver account since January, and I wondered if the bank was limiting the number it was allocating. Despite taking my ID into the branch, and chasing a number of times, I’ve had no success so far.
You e-mailed me at the start of June, 28 weeks after your first efforts at opening the account, so you cannot be accused of impatience. I contacted Halifax at that time, and heard nothing — but, it seems, the point did get through. When I called you early in July, I learnt you were going into the branch that very day to finalise the opening of the account. “The manager was very friendly — and chastened,” you say, and you now also have £100 as an apology.
I only needed one week’s insurance
JH writes: Following the death of my mother, I sold her house earlier this year. The sale was completed on February 3; her annual buildings insurance ran out on January 27. I therefore phoned the insurer, Axa, to renew the cover for one week. It insisted I pay the full annual premium of £294.91, which I did immediately. Since then I have been attempting to get the balance of the premium refunded.
At one stage you were told the company needed to have proof of the sale from your solicitor, which you provided, at the cost of a solicitor’s letter, but this produced no result. Eventually, when you called to chase the payment in mid-July, you were told there had been a problem with the system, which had delayed the issue of the refund cheque.
All this was total guff. The firm didn’t need proof of the sale, and the only problem with the system was that someone at Axa, having authorised the issue of the cheque on March 4, then forgot to send it.
The firm has now sent you a cheque for the full amount of the premium, adding £150 as compensation, and has said sorry.
Intelligent Finance wasn’t very clever
RD writes: Can you get some intelligence out of Intelligent Finance? I sent a cheque for £230 to be deposited in my account at the end of April. My bank, First Direct, was as usual most helpful, and swiftly provided me with a copy of the cheque, which left my account on May 10. Two months later, IF still can't find it, nor has it acknowledged my letter.
IF has now found your money, backdated the interest to the date of your cheque and, at your request, closed the account and forwarded the full proceeds to your bank.
Canadian card fraud hits Norfolk
CW writes: I have a problem with fraud on my Nationwide credit card. I have been trying to resolve this for six weeks, without success. Can you help?
Your card, it appears, was cloned, and sums in excess of £1,700 were taken from your account, stemming from purchases made in Canada while you were hard at work in Norfolk.
Fraud investigations can take time, and normally cardholders just have to be patient. However, you now have a new card and Nationwide has confirmed that the disputed items were fraudulent, removed them from your account, restored your full available credit limit, and sent you £100 as a gesture of goodwill.
E-mail Diana Wright at the address below or write to A Question of Money, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST, giving a daytime telephone number. We cannot send personal replies or deal with every letter. Please do not send original documents or SAEs. Advice is offered without legal responsibility