Peter Teich, 74, from Cambridge, got one digit wrong and as a result Barclays are refusing to refund the pensioner with his inheritance, due to the customer who received the money, not giving the bank permission to withdraw the funds.
Mr Teich only discovered his blunder when his sister had already received her share of their late father’s estate, but he had not.
Less than 12 hours after he had realised his catastrophic mistake, he contacted Barclays who advised him that his inheritance would be returned to him in less than a week.
However, this didn’t occur. The bank investigated the incident, and it transpired that the person who received the money refused to return it to the pensioner.
Following the recipient’s refusal, the bank refunded Mr Teich £25 as a small token gesture.
Peter told the Guardian:
“Barclays insisted that I bear the full and sole responsibility of pursuing their own dishonest customer.
“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.”
Consequently, Mr Teich instructed lawyers and spent £12,000 in legal fees just to get the name of the Barclays’ customer who received the money by mistake.
A battle in the high court followed, which cost a further £34,000 to obtain a freezing injunction before the court finally ordered the other customer to return the inheritance money to the rightful owner.
At first Barclays declined to recompense Mr Teich’s legal fees due to him claiming back his own money. However, the bank finally decided to repay the legal fees in full to the total of £46,000 and an additional £750 in compensation.
Mr Teich retaliated by saying:
“It could have taken Barclays a few days to recover the misdirected funds, but instead they did nothing.”
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