Top 5 Biggest Banking Errors

What would you do if all of a sudden you ended up with an additional few million dollars in your bank account without having won the lottery? Clearly, banking errors do happen, after all, there are human factors at work, but sometimes the errors are made by computers too and therefore we must always check our statements to see if things are as they should be. The following top 5 biggest banking errors take center stage as some of the dumbest errors ever having occurred:

1. Early Retirement Or Jail?
Fancy applying for a $7,800 overdraft from your bank and ending up with a $7.8 million deposit in your bank account instead. What would you do if that happened to you? As it did, the lucky - or not so lucky - New Zealand couple at the centre of this ginormous mistake did a runner.

Authorities are now pursuing them. The question is, where would you hide with so much money?


2. Salary Bust! Three Years Mislead By Banking Employer!
One UK bank employee had to find out that the salary she was drawing for three straight years from her employee - Barclays Bank - wasn't meant to be what she got paid. It took the bank a total of THREE years to figure out that part-time complaints adviser Natasha Keenan, 36, got paid almost double her salary. Her yearly salary was £17,000 when in fact it should have been only £9,500.



What makes this even more so a joke is the fact that Mrs Keenan applied for a mortgage with her erroneous payslips which was granted and she also got a new credit card from a work reference. When the bank demanded their wrongly paid money back after three years, Mrs Keenan took her bosses to tribunal.


3. Work But No Pay! Rough Wake Up Call.
A total of 10% of the people in New Zealand paid by the largest bank’s corporate banking system experienced a rough wake up call when they learned there was no payment in their accounts. The blame was put on an "operator error during the bank’s overnight batch processing." Hmmm... what say you?


4. Ammunition Gone Astray - Bank Leaves Ex-Soldiers Behind:
After serving and protecting their country more than 450 military veterans faced penalties and fees for cashing in their department checks late. An overeager employee of Citibank had changed a previously made contract arrangement between the department and the bank leaving these people in the lurch with worthless checks and penalty fees for trying to cash them late - unbeknown to them of course.

Citibank ended up having to reimbursing the veterans for the checks and the extra fees!


5. A Case Of Too Much Information!
A customer of Scottish bank Halifax, Stephanie McLaughlin got more than she asked for when asking her bank for a copy of her bank statement.

You can imagine the shock she had when receiving a 2,500 page document that contained account details of some 75,000 of the Scottish bank’s customers. Tsk,tsk. Naturally, being the decent citizen she is, Ms. McLaughlin took a hike and gave the bank the sack.


Have Your Say! What would you do if any of the above happened to you? Would you:

• Be honest and report the error to the bank as soon as you see it, or
• Take a hike and disappear, never to be found again while enjoying the high-life somewhere tropical and far away?

Personally, except in the case of the UK bank employee who got paid an erroneous salary for three years I would feel too lucky not to report the error because in the end, you'll always get caught anyway - it's simply not worth the hassle to run.

 Fact is that these banking errors are very embarrassing for the banks to say the least.