Thank you pmh, that is useful. Anyone here used this procedure?
That page from the Met Police is more confusing than anything.
Peter,
I would be very interested to see the content of the letter from your bank. A bank transfer that is initiated by the sender should NEVER be cancellable. A bank transfer initiated by the receiver (a direct debit for example) is indeed cancellable, without justification for 5 working days, and almost indefinitely thereafter with a justification (although what constitutes proper justification seems to be at the sender’s bank’s discretion, in practice).
Thanks Peter.
This makes sense; if there has been a mistake on the sender’s side, their bank will ask (not tell) your bank to return it.
It does mean that you never have cleared funds, really….
In practice you do of course know that a payment from a regular customer is “good”. But let’s say you have a small business, T/O say 500k, and you get a big order worth 200k. The customer is in the M/East. A default on this will sink your company so any businessman with a brain will ask for cash up front, by bank transfer.
Now… what happens? The money isn’t yours.
An irrevocable letter of credit is not a solution either because even a 1 day overrun on the delivery will void it.
It was probably a secretary just sending it back to the same account the original money came from. Not uncommon.
So, all they have to do is fill out the form and give it to the third party so that it can send it back ?
And why wouldn’t they do that if they have already conceded their mistake of not sending it to you ?
Good question!
They haven’t conceded that they made a mistake, they have conceded that they sent the money to the account from whence it came.
Now they simply can’t be bothered to persue it and so I need to find the correct stick with which to poke them.
