Normally, I write specifically about writing. Today, after a bit of a long haul job (apologies to my two followers!), I am writing about the fundamental importance of double-checking what you write online, by way of - I hope - a simple example. Any comments are welcome.
Barclays, Lloyds and Santander – O, for a
missing zero!
Two weeks ago,
on a Friday, I made an immediate online down payment through Barclays, my bank
of 43 years, as an advance to cover materials for work carried out by John
Smith, a builder who had already put in two or more days’ work excavating and
constructing a base for a new garage.
Using my
trusty Barclays PINsentry and equipped with John Smith’s account details, I
entered: the account name, John Smith B1; a six-figure sort code; a seven-figure
account number placing a 0 in front, as instructed for seven-figure account
numbers; and finally a reference for my own use (in this case ‘John Smith
Garage Base’).
The next
day we went on holiday for a week, returning on Saturday to an excellent
completed job. On the Sunday of that weekend my partner made a payment representing
the completion of the work required. She too placed the 0 in front of the
seven-figure number, as required by the system.
On the
Tuesday morning of the ensuing week, John Smith, who was by now working on the
next section of the work required told me that no money had reached his
account: not the advance I had successfully paid, nor the completion amount for
part one of the work schedule.
To my
horror, and certainly to John’s horror – we all know that sick feeling don’t we,
when our worst fears are realised? – it turned out that John had missed out one
of two consecutive noughts in his account number when he had handed me the
paper with his clearly written details.
Thus, I had
by all appearances created a new account number with most of them in the same
sequence exactly as the correct version – which had two consecutive noughts in
it, rather than one.
I hope you’re with me on this; the two zeros were near the
end of the account number, in 5th and 6th place. I should
emphasise that each transaction, separated by nine days and duly administered
through Barclays’ and Lloyd’s respective systems, was entirely successful from
our end. We thought no more about the payments, having made them, and were
given no reason to have the slightest concern. In my case, in particular, the mislaid
money was not returned, nor reported as an error in my transaction even though
a full eleven days had elapsed since I had made the first payment to the point
at which I learned of the problem.
I, in the absence
of my partner who was out at work, was very quick to inform her of what
happened. I went to her office. As an estate agent she had several meetings
with prospective buyers to honour and other calls on her time during a very
busy period, which meant she was not able to get to her bank, physically or
otherwise, until just after 2pm. By then, accompanied by John Smith, I had
already spent the best part of an hour, initially being looked after by a
cashier and subsequently talking directly to a Barclays ‘global’ (or something)
operator who in polite and friendly (but distant American-sounding) tones, told
me that I would receive a letter in five working days, which was the protocol
for the ‘mispayment investigation’. This would be followed by an investigation
report which might be in a further period of some 15 working days.
Somewhere,
possibly, it seems, a button had been pressed and the rest was down to digital
inevitability wrapped in anxiety, on the part, at least, of John Smith, my
partner and me. I didn’t get the impression so far that any bank was much
concerned with anything but to move me away from the queue. Meanwhile the
data-seeking digital missile is ponderously towed to its silo.
To my
surprise, I was also told that the name of the account holder was irrelevant in
the system itself because it was not cross-checked in the system. Whether the
cashier who told me this was right or not I still do not know, despite a
three-quarter hour follow-up call which involved retelling the entire story –
eventually. I find it extremely hard to believe, in a system that won’t let you
make a correct submission without the bank account payee’s name, that the name
is to all extents and purposes irrelevant.
Following
her meeting at Lloyds local branch, my partner was given exactly the same kind
of information – basically they could only provide an answer to their
investigation in some 20 days’ time. Bear in mind her concern about this,
because the missing money from her account was some 500 per cent more than the
amount I had sent into the ether.
John Smith
then went to his bank, Santander, owner of the sort code, which was thankfully
correct and which, within the general banking system, denotes a bank branch in a
specific physical place – in John’s case, somewhere in the Aylesbury area. He
told his woes and was given some assurance, again thankfully, that bearing in
mind the extreme unlikeliness of there being two such very similar accounts
belonging to one local branch, it was probable that the ‘system’ had slipped
the dosh into a back pocket until someone rang its doorbell. This at least was
some assurance towards the end of a very fraught day; a day in which I lost
most of my working time as a commissioned writer while the builder lost his
entire day. And all we were left with was uncertainty. Uncertainty is the latest
fashion trend promoted on summer catwalks: the higher the couture the more difficult
the decisions, even for the very rich.
In an ideal
payment system what certainties would we most of all like, as pertains to a
case like mine? I think they are these:
First, that
the money is returned in full, with the lightning speed, if not within a day or
two at the very most. Therefore, and as part of the first process, a
transaction in process to the wrong account number would not be ‘completed successfully’,
but is reported immediately – as in the immediacy of the internet generally
with a fast connection – as an error. To us.
Second, that
we do not have to pursue endless hidden and hopeful electronic corridors to
find a person to talk to us about the progress of any enquiry in such a way
that every time we knock, with our customer presence, on the door of own money,
we are treated as strangers and have to explain ourselves as if we are passing
urchins begging for a scrap.
Third, and
most hopeful, is that true and real, dynamic, knowledgeable and human
personality is uppermost in all dealings and transactions, whatever our
financial status.
I’m betting
there are countless other possible requests. Clearly we have years and
years before we get vaguely close to this systemic utopia, for currently we are
all bound by a system, here in little old 2016, which leaves the rats to feed
on the children, our eyes averted as we sit at our screens.
