unauthorised money taken from my AIB account

went to the pass machine to take out money and i knew i had 220 euro there, so when i went to take it out the screen displayed 'insufficient funds for this transaction'.
i then rang my girlfriend and asked her to log onto my online account and 146 euro went out on friday gone with 'op/SKY Digital' beside it.
I don't have SKY, never did and out of work at the moment, so i didn't sign up with them.
anyways, i got on to sky digital today and was told that the money was taken out fradulently (ie someone gave my account number and sort code but with a different name and address)
i was told to get onto the bank to claim my money back. also told to contact the police and get them to investigate it as a crime and get them to contact a police liason officer at Sky.
the account was only opened 5 days and then, the sky account was opened with my account and sort code.
I will be going to the bank at 9am tomorrow to sort it but just wondering what peoples thoughts are regarding this.

I would find this very worrying , if its possible for someone to withdraw money from a bank account , and the a/c number and persons name and address don't match .

I always thought that you had to sign a direct debit form to have money taken out of your account. Do people in banks check signatures anymore?

SoylentGreen said:

I always thought that you had to sign a direct debit form to have money taken out of your account. Do people in banks check signatures anymore?

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No you don't. There are many providers who can create direct debit mandates over the phone/web now.

Even at that, it seems unlikely that Sky just randomly picked a sort code and account number to debit, without it being provided by someone. Merits significant further investigation from the OP

'op/SKY Digital

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The clue is in the first 2 letters. OP stands for Originator Plus, a system where merchants can set up Direct Debits without a paper mandate or signature. Very popular these days with ultility companies, Sky, UPC etc. Paper mandates are very uncommon nowadays.

AIB should refund straight away as there was no authorisation from the OP. If they give you any guff tell them you will take the matter further.

OP stands for Originator Plus, a system where merchants can set up Direct Debits without a paper mandate or signature.

That's exactly what the bank said this morning when I went up.
I was told to get on to SKY again as they took my money not the bank! They said the bank doesn't have to authorise the transaction as the a/c and sort code was given to Sky, even though not by me!!! I spent 15 euro already in phone credit calling Sky the first time from being on hold so I didn't want to ring them again.
So I lost the head and demanded to see a manager and was she said the direct debit was now stopped and the money "should" be in my account tonight and show up online tomorrow. She gave me her business card and said if it's not in my account tomorrow to contact her and she will "see if she can try sort something out wherby the bank pays me".
Not exactly good customer service in my opinion, i let her know how i felt about it aswell.
The worst thing about this whole situation is I have money going out of a different bank tomorrow night for a loan payment and if it's not there, it will end up costing me almost 35 euro. (TSB 4.44 referral fee, 10 euro for returned dd charge and 20 euro from ge money)
Iwill be closing my AIB account as soon as I get my money back. If thats what they are like to deal with for a few weeks, I'll take my banking elsewhere. Thanks for replys.

Why am I not surprised at the banks reaction?

The bank is obliged to refund any unauthorised Direct Debits immediately but the banks will often give you the run around and tell you it ain't their problem. Well done for sticking to your guns and demanding satisfaction.

Originator plus should be abolished due to the amount of grief it causes.

money is back in my account now, im gonna close account today incase the person who gave the details to Sky actually thinks that my a/c and sort code is their one.
i'd say they have 1 digit wrong, but im not interested in the possibility of this happening again to me. usually i dont complain, but this situation made my blood boil.
this thread is my first post! great website.

To be honest, that seems like a bit of an overreaction until you've actually established what has happened..

It makes a change from the usual AIB response of "It's not our problem, you go sort it!"

To be honest, that seems like a bit of an overreaction until you've actually established what has happened..

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I dunno about it being an over reaction. This person could be using his bank account details to sign up to loads of stuff. The OP may never find out what happened as companies will use the Data Protection Act to avoid giving any info.

I have heard of things like this happening before, and it seems to arise most with entertainment services like television or broadband rather than with utilities like electricity or refuse disposal. I suspect that the offenders might be young people hoping to get away with things.

If you are freaked out by the idea of somebody getting to know your bank sort code and account number, then perhaps you should not use a bank at all: most transactions, including writing cheques, involve disclosing them.

That said, if a bank takes money out of your account without your direct or implied authority, they have a duty to remedy the situation fully and immediately. If they dragged their feet on such a thing, I would escalate the matter very quickly. One of the ways in which banking has modernised is the downgrading of customer service: telephone or counter staff do not always know what the bank's responsibilities are, or have the authority to do what is necessary to fix things, so I move up to a level where I can get things fixed.

Closing the account as soon as possible is a good idea. If that happens to me, I'll do the same thing. The reason why we have chosen to deposit our money to their bank is because we are confident that our money would be safe with them. But all of a sudden, these things happen.

Padraigb said:

I have heard of things like this happening before, and it seems to arise most with entertainment services like television or broadband rather than with utilities like electricity or refuse disposal. I suspect that the offenders might be young people hoping to get away with things.

If you are freaked out by the idea of somebody getting to know your bank sort code and account number, then perhaps you should not use a bank at all: most transactions, including writing cheques, involve disclosing them.

That said, if a bank takes money out of your account without your direct or implied authority, they have a duty to remedy the situation fully and immediately. If they dragged their feet on such a thing, I would escalate the matter very quickly. One of the ways in which banking has modernised is the downgrading of customer service: telephone or counter staff do not always know what the bank's responsibilities are, or have the authority to do what is necessary to fix things, so I move up to a level where I can get things fixed.

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Agree 100%. If the sky customer gave a different address, I would think it is more down to human error, one digit wrong, than someone trying to fiddle your account.

I was just having this conversation with people in work today about bank downgrading customer service and low and behold home tonight and there is a letter stating that my NIB Branch will no longer handle cash

MandaC said:

Agree 100%. If the sky customer gave a different address, I would think it is more down to human error, one digit wrong, than someone trying to fiddle your account.

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Not all bank account numbers are valid. They (and credit card numbers) almost invariably must satisfy what's called a checksum. The algorithms used mean that generally changing a single digit on a bank account will NOT result in an valid bank account number. It is very unlikely that something like this can happen by accident - the checksum is specifically designed to prevent this from happening.