When I was 19 I frequently wouldn't even open my wages slips and was totally muddle-headed about most things financial. And he's far worse than I was. Rightly or wrongly, the one thing I truly believe is that he wouldn't have gone through any thought process that led him to believe that someone had paid money into his account in error - he probably wouldn't even have known it was possible for such a thing to occur. As for applying for housing benefit, his girlfriend filled in the form as she's more idea than he has (though probably not a lot more). She would have handled all the paper work beyond that too. A quick calculation on roughly what I think he's earning as basic plus the variability of overtime (sometimes on a Sunday at double time or more - not sure what the rate is without speaking to him), plus the "totally confused" factor, plus the "not communicating with girlfriend over housing benefit" factor and so on leaves me no doubt he simply didn't have a clue what should or should not be in his account. Even if he thought he was "more flush", he simply wouldn't have taken the step needed to think that something wasn't right. Believe me on this, I know him and it's an accurate description of what would have happened. I take your point about the boot being on the other foot, but then I've said all along that most of it should be repaid. But I may now be wasting my time saying anything after the CAB told him not to contact them.

We'll probably have to disagree whether he's been "seriously wronged". I remember being young and inexperienced and taking little notice of how much is in my account from week to week. He seems totally unsure when the housing benefit was going to stop and how much was thus still due to him - this alone could easily have covered these amounts in his mind. Also, he does have payments going out of his account as well as variable wages coming in. If there's a lesson here for him it's to have more idea of what's going on with his account from week to week; however, I know him well enough to be totally unsurprised that he didn't notice anything amiss. I can't provide a definitive answer to the question about how much difference £90 would make without going through his entire finances in detail. As for the 2nd time, 3rd time and 4th time, it would be wrong to assume that he even really looks at the screen every single time he uses a cash machine. Yes, I know it's not perfect, but not unusual for a youngster. And if he's thus quite innocently spent money on things he wouldn't otherwise have spent it on then there's a strong argument against paying it back. Conversely, there was no argument against paying back the majority of it. As for "totally outrageous", if you'd had the phone slammed down on you twice (so I certainly made the effort) by the very people who have caused this problem, AFTER explaining exactly what it was about, that you were trying to do them a favour and WHY you weren't going to give a name, then you'd feel it was pretty outrageous too. The attitude was one of sheer arrogance to be honest. My aim was to set up an arrangement to allow repayment with anonymity retained, having already been advised by a recently retired police officer not to give a name under any circumstances. I now feel that the whole thing is slipping away from the little control I had over it, thanks to the "advice" of the CAB. It's difficult to go against advice given by those whose job it is to give advice just in case they're right. But I feel they are totally wrong. As I said, I'm awaiting their "info" then will try to work out what to advise my son to do, knowing that I'm in a no-win situation if it turns out I'm wrong. I may get to the point where I feel I've done all I can to try to help him and tell him he'll HAVE to sort it out for himself. Then he can decide whose advice to take....

I also agree with the CAB that it's incredible that it went on for four weeks undetected. I'd speculate that the intended recipient of the money is a new employee working part-time who was as naive as they come in failing to spot and report the lack of wages in his account for so long. Or if he did report it, they must have heaped incompetence on incompetence by taking ages to work out what had gone wrong, whilst continuing to allow it to happen with future weeks' wages. I'll certainly suggest to my son that he should change his bank account, although he shouldn't really have been put in a position where he may need to do this. As for refusing the bank permission to pass on the details, well, they've said in their letter that they can't refund the money without authorisation (which they won't get as this would involve refunding it all in one go) and this thread has already covered the breach that would be committed if they just told the company who the account holder is. I can't see how they could be told that they don't have permission to do something that they should know they're not legally allowed to do anyway!!!!???? And, sadly, there's always the problem of dealing with the Abbey that comes with a bank running foreign call centres with accents that are difficult to understand and people who often can't think "outside the box" of their basic training. Nothing against them personally but I know from experience how frustrating it can be to deal with a bank these days. I'm hoping for a day off from this now but I'll update as and when something happens, possibly the arrival of this mysterious "further info" from the CAB. Once again, thanks everyone for your interest and help.

Well, I'm still waiting for some further details that the Citizens Advice Bureau have told my son's girlfriend they can supply. No idea what kind of info that can be in view of what else they've said, but I await it with interest. But here's a precis what they said:- They have never heard of a case of a company managing to pay someone's wages into the wrong account FOUR times before it was noticed (they went right through their database and can find nothing like it). They believe that this is a fraud and have told my son not to contact the company AT ALL, let alone give them any kind of info about himself. He should go to his bank and ask them to thoroughly check if anything strange has happened other than this money appearing, or if any attempt has been made to access his account in any way. They also suggested there might be an attempt being made to clone his account and specifically used the word "[problem]" to describe what they think is going on. When he told me this, I wanted to tear my hair out (what little hair remains anyway). The things I can be 100% sure about are:- 1) The Abbey's letter, though unsigned, is on their headed paper (and the right paper at that, not just any old A4 paper with the Abbey's header printed on it - I'm an Abbey customer myself and am sure about this). The phone number is correct, the address is correct and their "Ref" is in the correct format of letters, numbers and slashes. The CAB, on the other hand, are basically suggesting that this letter is a fake. 2) The company that has paid this money into my son's account may be unbelievably incompetent but they are a real company that has been around for a mere 140 years (easily established from their website). They have hundreds of employees. The reason why my son hadn't heard of them is probably because they operate solely in a part of the UK with which he has no connections. One of my other two sons had heard of them because he knows that part of the country and the other son knew them because he works for one of their rivals. Also, the person who wrote the letter to the bank that the Abbey have forwarded really does work in their accounts department - the one thing I managed to establish during my unsuccessful telephone conversation with them. So, whatever this is, I can't see it being a [problem]. My concern about my son's anonymity is to prevent a dishonest individual from having both his surname and account number and acting dishonestly but independently of the company after that info came his/her way. The CAB have basically told my son that they believe this to be a pre-planned fraud with some dishonest objective or other (who knows what????). I really don't know what to do next as my son has taken this on board. If I tell him that I think the CAB are talking nonsense and by some fluke I'm wrong (e.g. the company is being "used" by one or more dishonest employee(s)) then I'm going to be vilified as the person who went against the advice of the CAB and fouled up. To be frank, however, I really do think they're advice is complete garbage and extremely unhelpful therefore in dealing with the REAL situation.... Comments anyone? I'm still trying to think it through.

Thanks everyone for showing such interest in this. I think that to avoid any doubt I should give my position on whether it should be paid back:- We are totally honest people and didn't ask for all this trouble. If my son had noticed it at the time then I'd expect it to be fully returned. However, as explained previously, he has spent some of it on things he wouldn't have spent money on with no reason to question that all the money in his account was his. Why should an inexperienced youngster think "Oh, some idiots have paid someone else's wages into my account by mistake" instead of thinking "I'm a bit more flush than I thought I was"? I know what I'd have thought when I was that age! As far as I'm concerned, there is thus good reason to offer to repay less than the full amount as otherwise he'll effectively have lost out - the money spent has gone forever and replacing it would mean cutting back on necessities. Also, there's the time, trouble and cost of dealing with it so far, which also should be deducted. Beyond those points, yes, they should get the rest back, but at his convenience and in a way that ensures they don't get his name, again for reasons previously stated. However, the attitude of the company responsible for all this has led to more people being consulted, more calls being made to try to get more information etc etc. This should all be taken into account - in other words, if I make a 15 minute phone call to someone about this that I wouldn't have made if the company hadn't refused to talk to me when I called them, then the cost of that call is another amount to deduct. Clearly, those responsible for the original problem and for exacerbating it must expect to pay all the costs involved in resolving it. I'm going to post again later as I'm waiting for a call from my son's girlfriend, who has had a long chat with the Citizens Advice Bureau today. I've had the very basic details of what they said and, believe me, it's surprising! Once again, thanks everyone.

I wouldn't be surprised if they went to court in view of their attitude when I phoned them - "we won't talk to you about it without a name" is hardly the way to behave when you're 100% in the wrong and someone has called to discuss YOUR error! Intriguingly, their letter to the bank referred to a telephone conversation that they'd already had with the bank and requested the return of the money via BACS!!!! You have to wonder what they were told by the Abbey's call centre on the phone but it was probably completely wrong! However, they have probably been given the impression by someone with little idea what they're talking about that they'd get the money back without any problem, regardless of the inconvenience that it's causing in the real world.... To show how interested the Abbey really are in this matter, their letter to my son ran to 3 short sentences, was unsigned (not even signed p.p.) and enclosed NOT a copy of the company's letter to them but the ORIGINAL!!!! They'd crossed out the number of the account into which the money should have been paid and written "security purpose" by the crossing out. However, you can still clearly see that account number as they haven't crossed it out very well and they didn't cross out the name of the person whose account it is! Great "security" by the Abbey!!!! Which I guess is a factor in that question that I'd so like to have answered, i.e. how can this company get my son's name LEGALLY. I wouldn't put it past the Abbey to give it to them through sheer stupidity but getting it legally is another matter.

Thanks for taking the time to give such a considered reply. To answer one question first, this is my youngest son and his 2 brothers would need no help on something like this! He's 19 and rather shy and easily tongue-tied when confronted by someone claiming to have some kind of special knowledge or authority. If they said black was white, he'd probably believe it. Even if he didn't believe it was white he still wouldn't know if it was really black, green or pink. I feel that if I can't help him out with this then I'm not doing my bit very well. My concern about the police was that I heard of a case where someone spent a huge sum mistakenly placed in their account (more like £100,000 than £352). Apparently they were charged with theft and with "receiving false credit" - I don't know if anyone else has heard of that offence???? I have now learned that the 4 amounts totalling £352 went into his account on his own pay day. He works different hours from week to week and thus gets overtime; being young he's not all that good at remembering what he's due either. Add to that the expectation of the final housing benefit payments and it's totally clear that there was no way of spotting that anything was wrong. He just thought he was "a bit more flush this week" and seems to have spent money on such things as an extra round for his mates on a Saturday night. Certainly, there's no way this extra money could be considered a "significant sum" nor could spending it be regarded as unreasonable in my view. Final question for anyone in the know. If we decide to make life difficult for these people, who have caused the problem and been totally unreasonable when I tried to deal with it, how can they LEGALLY obtain the name of the account holder? This is rather important, not because there's any intention to avoid repaying ANY of the money but because I intend to make sure he repays £352 less something for his trouble and does so as and when he can afford it. At the moment we hold all the cards, providing anonymity is maintained. If that goes then they can get nasty, which I get the impression is exactly what they'd do. Once again, thanks for your help.

My son received a letter from the Abbey enclosing a letter from a company he's never heard of. It seems this company has paid £352 in somebody else's wages into his account by mistake and are demanding it back. They gave the Abbey the wrong account number and the bank are not to blame; in fact, the Abbey say they can't return the money without his authority and have asked him to contact this company to sort it out. Straightforward you might think, except that the money went in in 4 payments of £80-£90 per week for 4 weeks and he hasn't yet had a statement even showing them (nor does he have online banking). He has recently stopped claiming Housing Benefit as his girlfriend has moved from a college course to working and he was expecting the last benefit payment(s) to go into his account, with no idea how much that would be. When he saw his balance on the cash machine screen he had no cause to suspect anything was wrong and has thus spent money on things he wouldn't have bought otherwise. Hardly surprising he didn't notice in view of the 4 smallish amounts. The upshot of it is that he can't authorise the Abbey to repay the whole amount in one go as he can't afford it. Also, I feel he's been seriously wronged as nobody could reasonably have expected him to have noticed but he's spent money on things he wouldn't have done otherwise and the company who made the error should be made to take this into account???? In addition, he's quite upset by it, being very inexperienced in financial matters and then there's the time, trouble, cost of calls seeking advice etc. So point 1 is that I feel he should be able to charge them for what is, after all, 100% their error, i.e. pay back less than the full £352 after taking such matters into consideration. Opinions on this gratefully received! Secondly, however, is what happened when I tried to help out by phoning this company at my son's request. They refused to discuss the matter at all UNLESS I give them a name. So they already have my son's bank details and now they want his name (or at least my name, which gives them his surname); this is about 50% of the way towards a dishonest person in their office carrying out identity theft. We are constantly being warned how careful we should be in revealing information about ourselves in case of identity theft yet this company, whose incompetence is the SOLE cause of these problems, are demanding to know the name of the innocent person whose account they paid into by mistake or they won't discuss the matter. I find this totally outrageous - what do you think? It seems to me that my son is caught between a rock and a hard place. Barring the deduction of a reasonable amount for his costs and trouble, there's no dispute that the money should be repaid. Yet they won't discuss the matter without having enough personal details to force him to change his bank account for security reasons. So what do they do next? He fears a police car turning up and taking him away for fraud or something despite the fact that reasonable efforts have been made to deal with something that was not his fault and the fact that this company has frustrated those efforts by demanding information to which they are not entitled. A recently retired police officer has advised us not to give a name for exactly the reason stated above by the way, but has no idea what the local police would do if this company made a complaint. Any advice on how to handle this would be received with massive gratitude.

Thanks for the encouraging replies! Re Payplan, although they've been helpful, our overall debts are not enough for them to intervene themselves. As I said, they sent us the forms to work out our budget and come to an arrangement with GE but that wasn't good enough for their "Financial Solutions" people, who wanted their own forms then failed to send them. We're settling now because we simply don't have the info to counterclaim now. When I first found out about charges being unenforceable, GE said that none of the info I had about this was applicable to them as these weren't Bank Charges for bounced cheques, exceeding an overdraft etc and the contracts my wife had signed meant that the charges were perfectly legal because of the way they were worded. I requested copies of the contracts AS SIGNED but so far have failed to obtain anything from them other than the most recent revision of the standard terms and conditions. Of course, I now know this was just more GE Money bull but we're just getting this out of the way so we can go after them without owing them anything that could lead to a CCJ. As I understand it, they could get this if ANY of the amount they claim was genuinely owed and I've no idea what the true picture is yet. Also, they and their so-called Debt Collectors, Viking (who are actually their own accounts department under another name, as Viking's own reports and accounts admit) have had my wife in a real state with their harrassment methods, many of which are without a doubt illegal under the Administration of Justice Act. Proving it is difficult though, especially as we were rather naive at first and were trying to resolve matters amicably. This, however, is a reason for getting them off our backs. sproggi, you've kind of lead on to what would have been my other question by mentioning the possibility of the default being removed. My point though was going to go further than that - if it turns out that the whole amount WAS charges (currently unknown) and the default was thus invalid, surely no summonses could be legitimately issued (as a legitimate default is needed first). So therefore, the Court and Solicitors Fees must also be met by GE Money!!?? Well, I'll cross that bridge when I finally get some figures from GE Money.... Finally, although I'm newly registered and posting for the first time, I had checked out the forums pretty well over the last few weeks as my son was already registered - he's taking on the Nationwide. The problem is that there's now so much going on that it's easy to miss the "key" post! Anyway, thanks again, any more comments/info welcomed and I'll keep the forum informed! PS Personal opinion - if a default notice is "over" by one penny, it should be regarded as both invalid and defamatory. Financial institutions never give us an inch so why should they get one back?

My wife got into difficulties with GE Money over 2 store cards. I took over and wasted months trying to reach an amicable agreement with them - this was before I learnt about unenforceable charges. I won't bore you with the 10,000 words I could write about GE Money's behaviour except to say that no financial institution should be allowed to act in the way they do. I'll just give you the final straw as an example as it leads into the vital question:- Throughout my attempts to resolve matters, I sent a payment on each account each month to ensure they could not successfully go to court and get a CCJ. In May, they instructed us to make no further payments. Instead, they said they would send us a form for us to provide them with details of our finances so that an agreement could be reached. This sounded excellent as they also said this would stop the interest. (We already had such a form from Payplan, but GE Money said they wanted it on their own one). Despite repeated requests, they never sent the form. Last week, they told me on the phone that they were now passing it to outside Debt Collectors as we hadn't returned the form that they hadn't sent. I said "great", believing I'd be able to deal more successully with a different company and at the same time take on GE Money to recover the charges, which I'd now learnt were unenforceable. Instead, they passed the accounts to solicitors who issued summonses.... Disgraceful behaviour? Believe me, this is only one percent of it! So on to the vital question:- We are desperate to avoid CCJ's and are thus going to pay up in full then go after GE Money over the charges. But can the very fact that we've paid up in response to summonses rather than just stroppy letters be seen as constituting an admission that the amounts claimed were actually fully owed? In other words could GE Money use the fact that we'd paid up when they issued summonses as a defence when we sue them to recover the charges? Just in case anyone's still reading (sorry to go on so much), can anyone tell me how the solicitor's can charge for each account not only £80 for their fees (which I'll try to get back later if I can prove it should never have been passed to them) but also £110 Court Fees if this is not going to go to court? According to them we don't need to do anything else if we send them a cheque for the full amount, but they insist this must include these Court Fees, which seems ludicrous under the circumstances. I have a third question but think I've gone on enough for now - it can wait! Sorry to write so much but I really need to know where I stand, especially over the main point above.