Online banking confusion

[PriOn1]

Please help. I have run into a major problem and I have a question about the wording in my online bank account. I would really appreciate your thoughts.

For clarity, it’s a bank outside the UK, but it is available in English.

My question is, if you used this bank, what you would expect to happen if you took the action I took. I know it’s not technically an AIBU but I wanted to use voting.

Having set up a monthly payment, I wanted to make some changes, so I went into the section where such changes can be made.

I clicked on a button under the transaction which said “Stop transfer”.

Having clicked in that button, the wording on the button changed to “Start transfer”.

I have enabled voting and will explain later what happened, but if you did what I did, would you expect…

IABU: The monthly transfer would stop until you clicked on “Start transfer”

or

IANBU: The bank would stop the transaction for only that month and it would restart the next month automatically without any further action being taken.

I don't know anything about non UK bank accounts but I'd assume the whole thing is suspended/cancelled until or unless you re-start it

But if that's not how bank accounts work in your country I'd be wrong 😀

I’d probably assume the transfer had stopped til I actively re-started it but am guessing the bank stopped one payment and restarted the next one. I’d also guess the bank are saying stopping a payment isn’t the same as cancelling a payment/direct debit/standing order.

'Transfer' implies it's a singular payment. So I would assume a scheduled payment had been stopped and would start again if I clicked the button.

In the UK, it would be a Standing Order which is a regular payment you make out of your account controlled by the customer. A direct debit is a regular payment controlled by a company which you can't restart by yourself, you'd have to contact them which is the only reason I mention it. Standing orders in general though would be cancelled rather than paused and have to be reset up again.

Thank you for the votes and comments. It looks, so far, as if my confusion was reasonable. I’d really appreciate more input though. Ultimately I may need to go to the bank and complain about the wording as, in my opinion, it’s confusing.

I will come back later and explain what’s happened. I’m now in a really difficult situation.

Can you phone them and ask ? Or is it strictly on line only.

I called them. They say the error is mine and they cannot take any responsibility.

This does sound poor unless you have seriously misread the page.

I would phone and confirm that no further monthly payments to be taken and you want an email to confirm this has happened. (If they will do this , but sometimes a while on the phone or asking to talk to supervisors is worth it) So stop any further payments and then your only problem is this one which has gone out.

I suppose the the problem to some extent depends on the amount & affordability - but I would focus on making sure no more monthly payments go out and then see what you can do to recover the one which has. - Sounds like a poor website though from what you have said.

It would depend if the transaction you clicked on was "pay Coach ₩50 on the first monday of each month" - in which case all halted til clicked start, or "Pay Coach ₩50 on 1 October" in which case I'd expect just one to be stopped.

I'm guessing you've been paying someone you thought you werent, and can't now get the money back?

This is an image of the website, though this is a different transaction. With hindsight, I should have deleted, but thought it might be useful to have the details. In addition, I was exhausted after moving house and stressed out by my landlord’s unpleasant behaviour, but I genuinely believed I had stopped the monthly transaction.

I am now in a dispute with him. He is trying to charge me several months rent for cleaning and things he says I broke (mostly made up, fortunately I have some evidence) but in the middle of all that, I found that my bank only stopped the rental payment for one month. So yesterday they paid him one month’s full rent. Renting is very expensive here, so he now has over £1000 of my money, which will probably be quite hard to get back and will almost certainly take some time.

The bank say it’s my fault as I only stopped the payment for a month. I think that if they are going to use this system, it should be crystal clear that you are only stopping one “transfer” and not the “monthly transfer”.

I think it’s possibly a translation issue, though it may be banking language. Transfer isn’t a word I would use, payment or transaction would be more normal.

I also think “Stop” and “Start” make it less clear. I understand that they want it to be clear for those using English as a foreign language, but simple language sometimes loses nuance. Had it said “Stop payment” and “Reinstate payment” for example, I would have assumed it was a single transaction.

Really though, when you click on “Stop transfer” it should bring up a message asking if you want to stop one transaction or the series. When large sums of money are potentially involved, the system ought to be bulletproof.

I will hopefully get it back eventually, but right now, it’s just adding stress to an already horrible situation.

This is exactly the sort of thing I work with (in a different bank). That is very ambiguous. At the very least, they should have a (i) button that when you roll over, explains it cancels only the next payment and not the entire series. I suspect their thinking is that ‘delete’ covers that, which it kind of does, but IMO it’s reasonable to assume that ‘stop’ means for the foreseeable.

Thanks, @ChiefWiggumsBoy

I am contemplating sending a complaint. Apart from anything else, I wouldn’t want anyone else to find themselves in the position I’m in right now. I’m horribly tired though, and really could do without having to write any more.

Thanks all.

I think potentially it’s a bit of a translation issue . Upon your initial post I would have assumed all future payments would be stopped . However on seeing the three actual options it’s fairly clear that delete would stop everything and remove the payment , edit would let you change it , and whilst stop transfer is ambiguous, it obviously has to mean something different from ending/deleting the payment . I suspect the bank will put the onus back on you , in terms of you should have checked if you didn’t know what the option meant.

I wish you luck in getting it sorted out though .

Thank you.

I can imagine various scenarios where you would want to temporarily stop payments (payment break for holiday or stopping a transfer into savings if you hit a bad patch, for example) so having that as an option would also make sense.

Obviously, looking now, knowing I wanted to permanently stop it (rather than temporarily) I should have deleted. It’s two months ago, and I can’t really remember whether I noticed the delete button or not, or my thought processes around it. I’d had a very unpleasant experience with the landlord, who became very aggressive when I was in the process of leaving. I had also just bought my first house over here, which was stressful in itself with all the unusual language and unfamiliar processes. Obviously I’d moved house as well, so was exhausted.

I use Teams at work, and if there’s a series of meetings and you try to cancel one, it checks every single time whether you want to cancel that meeting or the whole series. That’s what I think the bank should have asked when I clicked the stop button.

I just feel that for moving large sums of money into another person’s account (rather than from one of my own accounts into another) it ought to be idiot proof, and it isn’t. Maybe I’m too used to the UK, where things used to be spelled out because a claim would be made if there was a mistake over anything vaguely unclear.

Sometimes it would just be nice to be back there, where everything is more familiar. I expect there are equally awful landlords there too though, and he’s the real problem. Anyone decent would just send the money back.