I'm grieving and I made a mistake, now my £8k inheritance is lost
My mother died recently, which was the last in a sequence of horrible events after the death of my son and my own cancer diagnosis.
Mum left me a small inheritance of £8,370 which was sent to my NatWest account. I planned to transfer it to an account that my husband holds with Lloyds so that he could buy a new boiler for our house. We are both pensioners and the money from my mum's estate is a lifeline to us.
I made the transfer through my NatWest banking app, but I wasn't thinking clearly when I sent it instead to my Lloyds credit card, which had expired years ago. I know there's no excuse for this error but my mum's death was a dreadful experience. I am also still unwell and undergoing a series of investigations, which I hope goes some way to explain why I wasn't thinking clearly when I sent this payment.
I immediately realised that the money had gone to the wrong account and felt sick to my stomach. I was in tears and spoke to NatWest to see if it could retrieve the money from Lloyds.
Dealing with various Lloyds call centres has also been an absolute nightmare. I have been promised return calls that never materialise. I have been on hold for hours at a time while the operators vary from being pleasant to rude and impatient. I admit I've become frustrated and tearful at times but I have always explained the background of my situation.
I made the mistake 12 days ago and the funds have now disappeared into the ether. No one will tell me where the money is or when I will get it back.
I just want the money returned to my NatWest account. The stress of this situation is having a serious affect on my already poor health. I am terrified I won't see this money again, which is sorely needed.Name and address supplied
I was so sorry to hear of the devastating series of events that had turned your life upside down and can totally understand why you were not thinking clearly when you made this payment.
Usually when money is sent to an expired account, the payment is retrieved and returned to the source. But your case was slightly different because there was an outstanding debt linked to your old credit card account.
You told me this amounted to £60 but you had long forgotten about it. The problem was that this debt had been outstanding for so long that Lloyds had passed the account's history to a debt collection agency. This made it harder for Lloyds to track down the account. Plus, as the account was no longer active it was difficult for it to match your details to the information it had in its system.
Thankfully when I stepped in Lloyds found the payment, and a few days later the money was back in your NatWest account. You have now also repaid the £60 debt.
I felt that Lloyds should have helped you sooner, instead of leaving you in the lurch and giving you conflicting information at a time of extreme distress. It explained that because of the different teams involved in locating and returning the money, the information you were given depended on which team you were talking to. Those teams were not linked up, which is also why you didn't get the return calls you were promised.
Lloyds said: 'We're here to help customers during difficult moments and we're sincerely sorry the support we gave our customer was not at the level she rightly expected. We've returned her money and made a payment in recognition that our service wasn't good enough on this occasion.'
It gave you £250 compensation and has told you about several charities that may be able to give you some extra support.
You said: 'It's clear that this was resolved as a result of your intervention so I can't thank you enough.'
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I work for a small business that sells memorabilia and over the past five years we have used a company called Bionic to manage our gas and electricity deals. When our contract is coming up for renewal, Bionic sends us quotes from suppliers and arranges the switch on our behalf.
We had an email from Bionic last September telling us that our contract with British Gas was ending in May. We decided we would shop around and get our own quotes to see if we could get a better deal.
I contacted Bionic online in September to say that we no longer needed its services. The agent said we should wait until the company had sent the next quote before opting out.
When we got the quotes later that month, I got back in touch using its webchat service to confirm that we didn't want to go ahead with the renewal. I made it clear that we no longer wanted Bionic to act on our behalf and, based on this conversation, I assumed that our contract with the company had been terminated.
A few months later I contacted British Gas to check when our energy deal ended, but was told that Bionic had already signed us up for another three-year deal with the company.
We were not sent any information about this new deal and had given Bionic sufficient notice to terminate our contract, so we can't understand how this happened. I complained to Bionic but it said it had no record of the second webchat conversation in September where I had confirmed that we wanted to opt out.
We have gone back and forth with Bionic to try and get it to cancel this contract that we never agreed to, but to no avail.Natalie, Lancashire
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Bionic told me that it had sent you an email to confirm the new contract, but this was news to you and you said you never got the email.
I was surprised that Bionic had signed you up to a three-year contract without you agreeing to it, but it explained that its digital renewal service is designed so that, unless a customer gets in touch to opt out, it assumes that they are happy with the quote and automatically signs them up.
One Bionic email contained a quote and gave you three days to opt out. Once that deadline was reached, you were then locked into a contract and couldn't cancel. Three days seems like a very small window of time to opt out, which I imagine could catch out some people if they missed an email, yet Bionic said that suppliers can hold prices only for a short time.
I also thought it was odd that Bionic finalised your contract eight months before your contract expired. It told me that it buys in bulk up to 12 months in advance and that, because of this, its customers get discounts on deals and are shielded from the price movements in the energy market.
But regardless of this, you said you had made it clear that you wanted to cancel before the contract was finalised, so why didn't Bionic act on that?
It showed me a transcript of the conversation on September 17 where you said you would like to cancel, but were urged to wait until the latest quotes had come through before confirming that you wanted to opt out.
You said there was a subsequent webchat on September 26 where you had confirmed that you wished to cancel, but Bionic claimed it had no record of it. It also said that it has never lost a webchat and told me that it has 'complete and accurate records of all interactions'.
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I could not work out why your version of events was different to Bionic's, but after I stepped in, it agreed to cancel your contract.
Bionic said: 'Customers can choose to opt out of our digital renewal service at any time prior to finalisation of a replacement contract. As a gesture of goodwill and a demonstration of our commitment to ensuring customer satisfaction, we are prepared to arrange the cancellation of the replacement contract.'
You have now arranged a contract directly with a supplier and said: 'This is the outcome that we wanted, but it is still very frustrating that we had to go through this ordeal in the first place. I believe this would not be resolved without your input, so thank you.'
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'Some of these mutually agreed exits and cuts that are going to have to come following the spending review's reduction in administrative budgets are an opportunity for the Civil Service to get more match fit.' Like other experts, he believes the central Whitehall machinery, such as the Cabinet Office, needs to be overhauled. The Government is in the process of slimming it down, but Thomas says: 'There's definitely further to go to get a No 10 Cabinet Office machine that's really humming.' A quagmire of quangos, a big and unwieldy Civil Service and ministers still finding their feet give a flavour of Labour's teething issues. Even a tentative proposal to scrap the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and hand its responsibilities to bigger, better-resourced departments appears to have been judged too ambitious and quietly shelved. These challenges explain why Sir Keir, after less than a year in power, is voicing opinions similar to those of Cummings. 'It's not that the civil servants are anti-Labour or anti any other particular party. I think the challenge is that change is always more challenging,' says Clive Betts, the Labour MP for Sheffield South East. 'The other problem is, in this social media age... you go on your computer and immediately say, 'This needs to be done', and you assume that it can be done. I had emails within two weeks of the last election saying, 'Why haven't you done taxi licencing, why haven't you changed it?' 'We know what needs to be done. But the process of getting it changed, and the actual details of the change and how you write the new legislation will take some time. The public, I think, is less understanding of those challenges,' Betts says. With Britain facing an acute housing crisis, more than 6m people waiting for hospital treatment and Europe's highest industrial energy prices, there is much to do and little time. After only 11 months in charge, Labour is trailing Reform in the polls and Sir Keir's personal rating is in the doldrums. Mandelson's former adviser, Diamond, points out that Blair confessed to only finding his stride with the Whitehall machinery in his second term. Sir Keir may not have that luxury.
