Almost a VERY expensive morning.

[TheSecondMrsAshwell]

So I had to pay off the balance of my deposit this morning. A walloping £180,725.50.

Anyway to pay something that big – as I’m sure you all know – you have to really jump through the hoops. I gave the first person I spoke to all the details and she read them all back. All good, we matched up. Then I had to speak to a different dept to get the transfer to go through. So he read everything back – account, etc. Then he came to the amount and there was

£1,807,250.00

Noooooooo!!!! That would either have left me £1.6m overdrawn or the transaction would be declined due to lack of funds. Either way, I’d have twins. Then kittens. Then twin kittens.

So just as well the bank puts you through an assault course before the money goes anywhere.

When I was 16 I was a cashier in the bank. I once did this, panicked and tried to fix it, made it worse, tried to fix it again and made it worse. The customers passbook had 27 transactions in it for £30,000 in the end when all they wanted to do was transfer £30. Mortifying. Thankfully they found it funny. My boss did not.

Last month I paid off a rather large credit card bill that had come to the end of its 0% period. Stupid cc co wouldn't let me do it online, I had to use the app.

Faff around getting into it and instead of an option to just "clear the balance", I had to look up the balance and manually input the exact amount I wanted to pay.

It was something like £7782.15. But their programming was off and it kept adding zeros in random places so I very nearly paid £770,820.15

@SpeakingFranglais , sorry, just realised I meant CHAPS not BACS.

The bank did do a check to confirm the payee details during the online process. But reading this thread, I am surprised that I could make the payment so readily. If I was doing it again I'd definitely send a token payment first.

@DaisyNGO
Well, I did try to do it in person, but couldn't for the life of me remember my pin number..... Until I was on the way home!

@ShaunaTheSheep
I tried to do it online, but in my bank, the limit for each transation is £25k and my solicitor wasn't keen on 8 transfers to get the money across.

@eightlivesdown
No, you're right, they were WAY more likely to decline the transaction than make me go £1.6m overdrawn. To be honest overdrawn was the better option, cos at least the solicitor would have had the money. Declining would be much worse.

Anyway, all done and dusted now.

I don't think my bank would allow that amount on the phone, it's 30k I think.

When we move, we are expecting to put several instalments in the solicitor account or pay for CHAPS.

On a much more modest scale, I recently accidentally paid £80 mistakenly, into the account of someone I’d previously bought something off on eBay. I contacted them and politely asked for it back, but received no reply. I went to my bank who said they’d look into it and try and retrieve it, whilst making no guarantees. After a few weeks, they go it back for me .

More often it isn't the solicitors email account that has been compromised, it's more likely scammers have had access to your email account, or computer possibly for weeks.

They see you're buying a house, and wait to send an email purporting to be from the solicitor. Usually the "full name" on the email will match the solicitors, but the actual email address will be incorrect.

The email basically tells you to send the money to the wrong account.

The most common way to again access to your account is when you have used the same credentials elsewhere, those credentials are often obtained as part of a larger hack. (i.e. FB, Linked in Adobe, BA,

You can check if any of your credentials have leaked by checking them at
haveibeenpwned.com

It's worth remembering most email messages are completely insecure as they aren't (usually) encrypted. You message may travel through multiple servers leaving copies of your messages along the way.

I read an article yesterday on someone who was scammed like this. They paid £1 first and confirmed it had arrived before sending the balance. But they confirmed its arrival by EMAIL, which had been hacked, so they were unknowingly communicating with the fraudster. So it's important top confirm by phone, and make sure your calling the solicitor, i.e. not a number the fraudster has emailed you. Or if the solicitor's local, check in person. Or pay a few days earlier by cheque.

I sneezed as I was doing a transfer online, thankfully I was able to rectify the error before it moved a few grand where it shouldn't have!

As a side note OP, if you do end up having kittens, could I have them please thank you 😻😻

I went to pay school fees and because it was a large amount transferred from my savings account into my current account they held up my transaction a relief really considering I'd recently sent it to the wrong account never to see the light of day again !!!

@CarrieMoonbeams

Well, I'm looking for kittens too (or I will be once I'm settled in)..... But if I have triplets or quads, I'll give you any spares.