A 74-year-old disabled man had his £193,000 (N91,930,725) inheritance payment withheld by a bank after he accidentally gave them the wrong sort code.
Peter Teich from Cambridge in the United Kingdom discovered his error when his sister received her share of the cash but he did not.
According to Daily Mail UK, he called Barclays Bank less than 12 hours after realising the mistake and was told the money which he was due to receive from his late father’s estate would be restored within a week.
But in a nightmare scenario, the recipient, who also lives in Cambridge, refused to return the fund mistakenly transferred to his account.
The bank later refunded Teich just £25 as a ‘small token gesture’.
“Barclays insisted that I bear the full and sole responsibility of pursuing their own dishonest customer,” he said.
“I freely acknowledge my mistake in this unhappy saga: I provided the sort code of the wrong Barclays branch.
“But my error fades into insignificance when considered in the context of Barclays’ conduct.”
Teich hired lawyers and spent £12,000 in legal fees before finally getting the other Barclays’ customer’s name.
He then went through the high court – and spent a further £34,000 – to obtain a freezing injunction before the court finally ordered the other customer to repay the cash.
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Barclays then refused to refund his legal fees to simply recover his own money before the bank finally decided to repay the £46,000 in full and an additional £750 compensation.
“It could have taken Barclays a few days to recover the misdirected funds, but instead they did nothing,” he said.
In a statement Barclays said:
“It is evident that on this occasion we have failed to meet the high standards that Mr Teich can expect to receive from Barclays, and for this we have offered our sincere apologies.
“After taking a closer look at this situation, we can confirm that Mr Teich can expect the fees he has incurred to be refunded in full with interest, together with a payment for the distress and inconvenience this matter has caused.”
