Today I did a balance inquiry and it said like 2400 dollars more than I had figured. So I went inside and they said it was suppoed to go in someone elses account and somehow got placed into mine but they hadn't noticed it...
She said I really appreciate you coming in here and telling us and I was like sure, I am not going to spend someone else's money...I mean how would I feel if I have "misplaced" 2400 dollars...I would be VERY UPSET. Anyway, that was my big adventure for the day.

By Mommyof4 on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 02:05 pm:

This very same thing happened to me last year. The bank called me one day to tell me that they were going to be removing 2,000 from my account because they put it in my account by error...it was supposed to go into the account of someone else with the same name that lived in CO. It had been in there over 2 weeks (this is an account that we don't really use anymore) so I am sure that the other T.S. was a little stressed out over it.

By Ginny~moderator on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 02:25 pm:

And, if you are someone who doesn't keep track of your balances and see this and spend the money, the bank will come after you for theft because "you knew or should have known". I never, never, never rely on what the bank says is in my account, particularly on ATM slips when I pull some cash out, because my bank doesn't know what checks I have written until they come in for payment. Thank heaven for Quicken.

By Ginny~moderator on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 02:27 pm:

Oh, and that's not really a "major" mixup. A major mixup is when someone from the Trust Department of the bank comes into the Processing Department of the bank and says to the shift manager on duty at the time - what did you do with Three Million Dollars from my trust accounts? The shift manager was my son, the person from the Trust Department is now my wonderful daughter-in-law, this is how they met, and the 3 million got sorted out the same day.

By Beth on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 02:55 pm:

That is a cute story Ginny! Good thing you were on top of things. That is a scary thing!

By Pamt on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 03:01 pm:

Or...on the other hand. We were the other people and my DH's paycheck had been direct deposited in someone else's acct---we assumed it had gone in as usual.

By Lorebunde on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 03:35 pm:

The same thing happened to my husband. Apparently another customer has the same last name.Whatever happened to account numbers?

By My2cuties on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 04:27 pm:

What is SO very weird is that I looked at the deposit slip and it had a TOTALLY different account number on it (handwritten) and then at the bottom the computer put MY account number on it. The lady at the bank just looked at me and said please don't ask me How this happened...
LOL, for a minute I thought someone was being very generous to give us 2400 dollars. half of that would pay off all of our debt..lol

By Kernkate on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 04:34 pm:

I never heard of them going by a last name I always thought they went by your bank account number?
I could understand if they put the wrong digit into a account #. Had that happen on a PP&L bill before.

By Conni on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 04:35 pm:

Wow that is quite a large sum of money for the bank to misplace.

Last week the payroll clerk my ex husbands work decided not to mess with direct deposits because she 'just didnt have time'. So I assumed my ds's child support had gone into his acct when I was writing a check for his medication. oops... Needless to say they had straightened it out by Monday morning, but it was not a good feeling.

Last summer my oldest ds made a $100 deposit into his savings acct. We went to check his balance a few months later and there was $100 missing. After the bank researched it, they figured out they had actually put his deposit into his DAD's savings acct. Strange.

By Ginny~moderator on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 05:00 pm:

My brother was a "junior" and banked at the same bank as my father - different accounts and different account numbers, of course. Frequent major messes until my brother moved to another city.

One problem with computer stuff is you type in a name and the computer "fills in" the rest (as with addresses in your address window above) and if the person making the entry doesn't double check to make sure that it is the right "James Brown", the computer does the rest - incorrectly.

By Wandilu on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 09:25 pm:

about three yrs ago,we cancelled AOL.The next month they still did the bank draft and took out the monthly charge.Which,of course,made a few checks bounce.When we got the overdraft charges in the mail,it took a few days for them to see what the problem was Then I started my fight with AOL.I told them they were responsible for the overdraft charges,etc.So,it took a few weeks to get it straightened out.I had also had two other problems that had happened with the bank right before this ,where they had messed up our account(deposited in the wrong acct,etc) so we decided to close this acct and go to another bank.When trying to open the new acct,they ran our names through Check Care( I don't know if this is everywhere,but here in Tn,this is the system that keeps up with bad checks) to see if we were eligable to open an acct.The former bank had me charged with ATM abuse and said I wasn't able to get another checking acct for 7 yrs!!! And when I checked into it ,no one at the bank even knew what atm abuse even was !! They had to look it up in some of their records to find out what it mean't.Anyway,since AOL automatically withdrew the money and it took several weeks to get it back from them,they charged me with atm abuse.So we had to open an acct just in my dh's name.I have reasontly heard that aol is notorious about doing this to people,and they are trying to get a class action lawsuit against them.

By My2cuties on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 11:09 pm:

Her last name was Reed..there IS no explanation at all...different account numbers different names...absolutely no connection to me whatsoever..just a weird mix up!

I have to say on a posistive note about my bank that I have been banking there for 7 years and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened to us.

By Dandjmom on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 10:35 am:

Wanda its called Check Systems here in WDC that checks for previous bank history before opening an account, I haven't had anything this drastic happen to me yet(but with so much being done by computers these days, adn so many people with the smae names wether related or not,I don't doubtthat it ever will)but there was a time when I made a deposit into my on account at the atm adn I received the statement showing the deposit and I checked my account a few days later and it was for much less then I had orignally deposited. That was BOA I left then because they would not giv eme my money , there claim was that a person can typwe in what they wnat to type in at the atm adn the computer imprints the envelope with what you input,but that information doesn't matter because the teller's open the envellopes adn inputs the deposit into the system. my deposit was for $250 but I got a credit for $25, I guess the teller was either tired from gettign to work to early or tired form being overworked all day.

By Dandjmom on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 10:38 am:

Oh my listen and my rule that I know live by after all of this ,if I need to make a deposit and its not a check (personal,payroll, refund)I don't deposit it throught the ATM, I go to a teller either inside or driveup and check my reciept carefully before leaving the window. Whats the saying we learn form outr mistakes, well in this case I learned from someone else's mistake. Hope this gets some of you all thinking about how you make deposits.

By Ginny~moderator on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 11:42 am:

Hey, my middle son worked in the check processing department of a major bank (since absorbed by another major bank), and he will NEVER make a deposit by ATM - check or whatever. Another son does deposit cash at an ATM sometimes, since he gets a lot of his pay in cash, but he holds the cash up and fans it for the camera at the ATM to see.

By Ginny~moderator on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 11:44 am:

Oh, and no, I don't think the teller had a bad day. if their system didn't show a discrepancy of $225 in their balances at the end of the day ($250 - $25 = $225), which would alert them that there was an error, then that $225 disappeared between the time you put it in the ATM and the time it got into the cash drawer. IMO.

By Hol on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 12:48 pm:

This isn't a bank problem, but when we were stationed in NC many years ago, we kept getting phone calls from bill collectors, saying that we owed this and that. I told them that they were wrong. We owed NO ONE at the time. Even our car was paid for. It went on for quite some time.

Then, one evening, I got a call and I could hear the sounds of bowling in the background! A man said, "Hey, tell Bob to get the hell down here! He's late!" I asked DH about it, since I knew he didn't bowl.

The thing that finally solved it was my DH getting called into his commanding officer's office, regarding a bill collector who had called him! Needless to say, DH was confused and a little scared! He looked at the complaint and discovered the error. Another man on the base had the same name as DH. He noticed that the Social Security number was not his. The CO aplogized profusely, and the phone calls stopped.

Then one morning, I was driving DH to work, as I needed the car that day. We saw a guy in uniform hitch hiking on the road to the base. We stopped and gave him a ride. He introduced himself, and it was the guy who had the same name as DH! There was a lot I wanted to say because of all the aggravation that we had had, but I decided that it was "water under the bridge", and let it go. HE found it amusing that DH had the same name. He had no idea.

By Dandjmom on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 11:55 am:

Ginny, more like for the time i put it in the ATM and the time that it got into her hand. Did you sone ever say why he doesn't make deposits at the ATM.

By Cat on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 12:24 pm:

We never use ATM's for deposits. Years ago when dh and I were dating he used an ATM to get a cash advance on his credit card. The ATM ate his card. Since it was Saturday he had to wait until Monday morning to talk to the bank. He went in and they didn't have the card! They had no clue where it was, so dh canceled it. A few days later a guy that worked in our building handed dh his card. Turns out the ATM gave it to this guy!!! Dh was furious. First, that the ATM gave his credit card to someone else after eating it, and second, that this guy waited so long to give it back. We were all living in the same dorm at the time, so it wasn't like it would have been out of his way.

My mom and ex-sil get confused at their bank at times. They both have the same name (my mom is Elizabeth and my brother married and Elizabeth). Sometimes the pharmacy they both use gets mixed up, too. It can be a real pain.

By Ginny~moderator on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 02:29 pm:

Letishe, he doesn't make deposits at ATMS because stuff can get lost. Ranging from a envelope getting stuck somewhere in the machine to actual cash missing and, of course, the clerk misreading your name or account number and crediting the wrong account. He says it is just not worth the risk - based on his experience in the check processing department of a major bank. At least if you make the deposit in person, you have a receipt - which came in handy when I deposited a $10,000 certified check from the sale of my old house and the bank put it in the wrong account or lost it, as I discovered when I got my bank statement. With the in-person deposit receipt I could prove not only that I had made a deposit but the amount of the deposit and the teller who handled it, so they cleared it up within 24 hours after I marked indignantly into the nearest branch of that bank.

By Lauram on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 02:40 pm:

My dad and brother have the same name (different middle names though). When my brother was 18, he paid the mortgage on our house. THey took it out of his account instead of my dad's. He was a bit upset!

By Dawnk777 on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 09:45 pm:

One year, on a Friday, and after 5pm, by the time we both got home from work and were looking at the mail, a letter from our homeowner's insurance, that the premium for our insurance hadn't been paid. It was supposed to have been paid by the mortgage company. The frustrating thing, is that DH blew a gasket, but there was nothing we could do about it ALL weekend. So, early Monday morning, he calls the mortgage company and they tell us the check was sent to the insurance company. Then DH calls the insurance company and they look into it. To make a long story short, someone else had the same name as my DH and they credited their account twice and ours not at all! It got fixed right after that, but frustrating to have to stew about it all weekend! We had more problems with that mortgage company and we always got the mail on Friday afternoon! LOL! I swear they planned it that way.