# Has a bank ever did an error in your favor?



## youngdad3 (Jun 29, 2013)

... and did they notice ?

I've put about 7k$ on my mortgage on jan 4 through my local branch (I usually do it online but it did not work for an unknown reason)
The cashier asked me from which account to take the money, made me sign the form, etc.

When I get home I log onto my bank and realize they applied the amount on the mortgage but money has not been taken out of my saving account.
I told myself: oh it's going to be taken out at the end of the business day, no big deal.

but hey, 3,4,..,7,8,9 days later the money is still there. Did she make a mistake? Was the money taken from someone else's acnt? (how would that be possible?) In the end, electronic money is just a matter of numbers in a database, maybe there was an unnoticed sql error when they tried to substract the amount? (I know I'm dreaming on this one!)

Well, yesterday (10 days latter) I got a call at work from a lady form the bank asking me again from which account I want the money taken because the cashier made a mistake and took the money from an internal cashier account and now she's unbalanced. Darn, I guess I'll cancel the 7 days disney cruise :tongue-new:


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## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

If the error had not been spotted, you would have said nothing young.dad? Sooner or later such mistakes are noticed, no matter what institution makes them.

Years ago, I received a 6-figure severance, that much was correct, except that the amount paid was 2x, did I blow the gifted 1/2? Of course not, I reported it the minute I received it.

Imagine you were the one making the mistake [no matter how big/small], what would you hope for then, for you to be fired, or for the mistake to be corrected? And what would you teach your kids to do?

Of course nothing wrong with dreaming about that DIS trip.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

I have been on the receiving end of such a mistake.
Many years ago, long before we had bought a house, one fine day I notice in my bank account that there is a debit for a mortgage payment.
It was someone else's mortgage that got debited from my account.

I called the bank and they credited it back, and assured me it will be fixed.

But yup, same thing happened the next month - same mortgage amount debited on the same date.

It took another call to get this fixed.

Aside from the wasted time making the phone calls, the issue is that many people manage the cash flow in their checking account carefully.
I seldom have a large cash sum sitting there idle.
Therefore, an unexpected debit like that can easily create havoc in the account and cause really bad things, such as NSF with auto debit payments.


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## youngdad3 (Jun 29, 2013)

Would I have said anything? I don't know really, I knew things would get sorted out sooner or later, I just thought it would take less time. But, as I am usually not a lottery player, I don't get to dream much often what would I do if I won money, at least for a small fraction of time I got that feeling heh.


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## lightcycle (Mar 24, 2012)

Toronto.gal said:


> If the error had not been spotted, you would have said nothing young.dad? Sooner or later such mistakes are noticed, no matter what institution makes them.


And yet, I've experienced several errors in the bank's favour that I've had to fight tooth and nail to correct, taking up my valuable time. If I hadn't noticed it, these errors would have gone uncorrected. I've heard stories about this happening to a lot of people, so I'm sure I'm not the only this has happened to.

I don't believe two wrongs make a right, just pointing out that FIs are not the paragon of integrity and if the shoe was on the other foot... well, that lace would come up a few inches short and they wouldn't blink an eye.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

lightcycle said:


> And yet, I've experienced several errors in the bank's favour that I've had to fight tooth and nail to correct, taking up my valuable time ...
> I don't believe two wrongs make a right, just pointing out that FIs are not the paragon of integrity and if the shoe was on the other foot... well, that lace would come up a few inches short and they wouldn't blink an eye.


Hmmm ... I guess it depends on one's experience ... something like 90% of the errors I've found have been in the bank's favour. Of that total, 60% were found then fixed in a way that it was as if the error never happened *before* I found the time to call the bank. For example, where the account was debited in error, debit amount plus interest were credited.

Where I have called - a quick explanation plus quote of the confirmation number and then it was fixed. Only once was there a questioning as "you want credit for $0.20?" but it was one question and done.


CRA on the other hand, took twenty minutes on the phone before the clerk was willing to look into it. It took thirty seconds to confirm it was an error that left alone would cost thousands in penalities. Once confirmed with an explanation of what happened, to avoid the penalties *I* had to fill out four years worth of tax return adjustments because ( ... get this!) " ... CRA needs proof the tax payor would prefer the error reversed ...". 

It seems pretty clear to me that no one is going to want to leave a data entry error in place that means paying thousands in bogus penalties!


Cheers


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## Kail (Feb 7, 2012)

Once upon a time when I was a broke 17 year old working at McDonald's, I had to get my debit card replaced. I went to the branch and got a new one, punched in a new pin and off I went. Soon after I went to the bank's ATM only to find thousands of dollars in my account. Making $6.85 at the time, it clearly wasn't mine. I returned to the bank to let them know the error and it turns out the had given me a debit card for my parent's account and had me reset their pin. My dad and I have the same first name and lived at the same address so I guess I can see the mistake happening? I had to get my parents to go in and reset their pin.


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## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

lightcycle said:


> FIs are not the paragon of integrity


I would also fight tooth and nail to have ANYONE correct HIS/HER errors, but that does not mean that I would lower my integrity as a result.


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## lightcycle (Mar 24, 2012)

Toronto.gal said:


> I would also fight tooth and nail to have ANYONE correct HIS/HER errors, but that does not mean that I would lower my integrity as a result.


Here, you seemed to have left out a quote. For the record:



lightcycle said:


> *I don't believe two wrongs make a right*, just pointing out that FIs are not the paragon of integrity


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## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

^ No, I did not leave that out, I mean that I did read it. However, many believe many things, yet still do the opposite.


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## lightcycle (Mar 24, 2012)

Toronto.gal said:


> ^ No, I did not leave that out, I mean that I did read it. However, many believe many things, yet still do the opposite.


And many seem to be able to deduce and infer character contrary to stated beliefs.


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## 30seconds (Jan 11, 2014)

I once inputted the wrong amount on a cheque I deposited that was less then what it was worth. The bank noticed the mistake and put the money in. Called me and it was listed on the statement


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## Charlie (May 20, 2011)

Only bank error in my favour has been in Monopoly.

I took the money.


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## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

lightcycle said:


> And many seem to be able to deduce and infer character contrary to stated beliefs.


Deduce? I don't know why u even bothered quoting me in the 1st place, when all I said is that you should return money that does not belong to you.


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## lightcycle (Mar 24, 2012)

Toronto.gal said:


> Deduce? I don't know why u even bothered quoting me in the 1st place, when all I said is that you should return money that does not belong to you.


Strange... why did you think I was talking about you...?


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## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

^ Maybe because u quoted me? 

Never mind.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Back on topic:


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## tygrus (Mar 13, 2012)

My bank made an error that increased available funds in my HELOC by $100,000. I notified them of the error on the account twice. They assured me they would correct it both times but it remained there for months. 

So I decided to withdraw it. Then the alarm bells went off and they were phoning me every day asking when I would return it.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

When I was working in a national auto parts warehouse, we would get calls from dealers every day claiming they were "missing" parts from their order.

Never once............in all those years..........did a dealer call and say we shipped them too many parts. They would just send them back as "returns" and get a credit for them.

It got so bad, the company had to institute 100% stock checks on all orders before closing the boxes.

I was working on the "dealer return" line once, and had a return of 6,000 spark plugs. There was one old plug in the box.

The company credited the dealer..........."because he is a big dealer".

As a rule...........I don't think people are terribly honest, if they think they will get away with it.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

I got a few weeks of interest on a significant amount of money that should have went into my business account ,I was happy they let me keep the $343.00 and just fixed it up under the business day we figured it out


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

THis is more of a bank - associated error (mostly user error) in my favour. 

When I moved my kids RESP from RBC to TD I tried to buy all my e-series one day but I didn't fully understand how the interface worked and ultimately got hit with an NSF charge and the purchases reversed. This was just before a big market correction that I figured 'saved' me about $500 compared to the 45 NSF charge.

Ignorant user (me) + bad interface = win for me!


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## daddybigbucks (Jan 30, 2011)

New Years Eve 1990

I went to instant teller and took out $20 and it gave me $40.
I did it again and same thing.
I took out $100 and got an extra $100.
Told me friend and he did the same thing.

He held on to the extra $100 because he thought the bank would contact him next day. I drank it away that night.

They never did contact us.


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## hystat (Jun 18, 2010)

I had a chequing account for about 10 years in the 90's that had a $1500 overdraft limit. It never charged any interest or fees for being in overdraft.


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## Sasquatch (Jan 28, 2012)

daddybigbucks said:


> New Years Eve 1990
> 
> I went to instant teller and took out $20 and it gave me $40.
> I did it again and same thing.
> ...


ditto, only I got to $160 times 2 before I decided to call it a day. Greed is a terrible thing :biggrin:


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## alingva (Aug 17, 2013)

youngdad3 said:


> ... and did they notice ?
> 
> I've put about 7k$ on my mortgage on jan 4 through my local branch (I usually do it online but it did not work for an unknown reason)
> The cashier asked me from which account to take the money, made me sign the form, etc.
> ...


I wonder why it took them 10 days to find out. Usually it takes 24h...
Yes, sometimes banks make small mistakes (not huge like this one)...
Believe me, if you know the system, you can make sure that banks make mistakes in your favor.....


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## NorthKC (Apr 1, 2013)

As a former treasurer for one of the organizations, the bank did not record the deposit that I made into the account. As a result, we got a huge NSF ($55) on one of the cheques that bounced due to not enough cash in the bank. When I found out about the NSF from the person whose cheque has bounced, I was getting ready to call the bank when they called me to tell me that they discovered the error with the deposit (wrong account) and fixed everything on the spot AND reversed the NSF AND gave us $5 extra in interest as compensation. That was probably the only time that I have ever loved a bank!


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## Sammi (Nov 12, 2013)

Not a bank story:

When I was a co-op student I was working full time hours. Then I went back to school to finish my last semester but stayed on part time to work 2 days out of the week.

We signed the paperwork but the amount never changed, they were still paying me 5 days a week!

I figured the Admin forgot to fax it to Pay and I don't even know if they would ever notice since we don't log hours at work.

Anyways I figured if I were to have a career at this company and stay after I graduate I'd better fess up so I did and it was fixed immediately. I believe the mistake would have given me an additional $10k in my pocket if I let it slip through the entire semester.


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## PrairieGal (Apr 2, 2011)

I made a deposit once for a company I was the bookkeeper for and made a $900 error in our favour. When I reconciled the bank account at month end I discovered it and informed the bank. Nope, they said they balanced that day and there was no mistake. 

Well, since this was a Trust account it was not that simple, so I asked them to check again. No, they insisted all was good. At year end I had to make sure that Trust account balanced to the penny, so I asked them to sign a letter stating that there was no error in that account, then I was going to move the $900 over to our General Account. Only then did they do an in-depth analysis and finally discover that there were two mistakes that day that cancelled each other out. They finally corrected the error.

Pretty bad when you have to convince the bank that you have too much money in your account.


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