I sent a CHAPS payment on Thursday from my account with the Yorkshire Building Society as I needed the money in my own business account with Santander that day to make a foreign currency payment.

I paid £23.50 for the fast service and was promised the money would be in the Santander account later that day.

It's now Tuesday morning and still no money in my business account. Numerous phone calls to both institutions just sees them pass the blame onto the other side.

Is there anything I can do quickly to get this sorted. All i'm being quoted is that the 'chase' they can put on the payment can take up to 30 days. I don't have 30 days and need my money now, and it seriously puts a shambles on it being a same day payment service.

How much money was it? You may have to escalate it out of the branches hands. Sadly theres no magical button to give it you now if theres been an error. The only recourse is a complaint and escalation to the top.

It was around £4000.

If so, it's a stupid system that should be quick but can take weeks to sort out a problem (their problem, not mine) and leave customers without their money in the meantime.

Bank account details have been double and triple checked and they're all correct!

Does not take very long to resolve. I have dealt with CHAPS payment issues. Whoever processed it, just needs to make a few phone calls, after checking that they processed the correct information. It might be the CHAPS info was incorrect and it came back with an error.

I'm getting told by YBS that Santander won't accept phone calls to resolve the issue and they have to deal with it through SWIFT messages, which i've been told can take up to 30 days.

But Yorkshire Bank have their own reports on the CHAPS to say whether it was received by Santander or if there was an error.

Banks don't work in isolation. There is a processing system Banks use.

Suggest you escalate a complaint with Yorkshire Bank, as if they processed it correctly the money would be in your Santander account.

YBS have said that Santander have received the money but Santander deny it and keep referring me back to YBS.

I am in contact with YBS through my local branch and have got them talking to Santander at the moment to hopefully resolve this issue.

My instinct is that the problem is with YBS. A CHAPS payment correctly processed gets to the destination account without any problem.

Local Bank branches are normally pretty useless in regarding to accounts processes.

YBS still claiming the fault was with Santander but thankfully, after getting the branch manager at Santander to contact my local YBS branch, they have worked between them, getting the necessary details for Santander to perform a search on the transfer and hey presto, about 30 minutes later they found it and it's now in my account.

Thanks for your help and obviously won't be using CHAPS again, will stick to faster payments, much more reliable, quicker and free too!

YBS still claiming the fault was with Santander but thankfully, after getting the branch manager at Santander to contact my local YBS branch, they have worked between them, getting the necessary details for Santander to perform a search on the transfer and hey presto, about 30 minutes later they found it and it's now in my account.

 

Thanks for your help and obviously won't be using CHAPS again, will stick to faster payments, much more reliable, quicker and free too!

Bet YBS processed it to the wrong Santander account. Santander found it after a search and transfered it across.

As i said, if you do a CHAPS correctly, then the amount will go through with no problems.

I can remember doing these and triple checking the information. These are only used when it is urgent and if an error is made it is a pain in the *ss to sort out.

Wish Banks who made these mistakes would own up. They don't, as it might generate a complaint and compensation.

Well I will be complaining to both banks and finding out who was at fault but think it's going to take a long time to reach a conclusion.

Just an update that I haven't forgotten to come back and update everyone what happened.

I followed both banks complaints policy, and both denied responsibility but both paid small gestures of goodwill into my accounts. However, it was unsatisfactory and I escalated both complaints to the Ombudsman a few weeks back and am awaiting a conclusion from this.

Just to update everyone, yes the money did end up at the right destination 5 days after it should have been received. However, it only did so after I personally chased the payment with both parties. Santander manually tracked the funds, and low and behold the funds were in the right account half an hour later.

Of course, according to Santander and the Ombundsman, the monies were scheduled to go into my account that afternoon anyway and that me having it chased was just a coincidence.

Yeah, and I'm the pope.

All in all, the Ombudsman backed Santander, even after an appeal and there was nothing I could do about it. YBS did refund me the CHAPS payment fee, and Santander offered a small payment of goodwill less than 2 times the CHAPS payment fee, but Santander will lose a customer over this as I'm looking at alternatives now.

So, all in all, Santander did nothing wrong, but not in my eyes they didn't, and I will be voting with my feet.

Just to update everyone, yes the money did end up at the right destination 5 days after it should have been received. However, it only did so after I personally chased the payment with both parties. Santander manually tracked the funds, and low and behold the funds were in the right account half an hour later.

 

Of course, according to Santander and the Ombundsman, the monies were scheduled to go into my account that afternoon anyway and that me having it chased was just a coincidence.

 

Yeah, and I'm the pope.

 

All in all, the Ombudsman backed Santander, even after an appeal and there was nothing I could do about it. YBS did refund me the CHAPS payment fee, and Santander offered a small payment of goodwill less than 2 times the CHAPS payment fee, but Santander will lose a customer over this as I'm looking at alternatives now.

 

So, all in all, Santander did nothing wrong, but not in my eyes they didn't, and I will be voting with my feet.

So glad to have Pope Francis on CAG!

Can we open a dedicated subforum for religious advice?