A father battling stage four brain cancer lost $200,000 in life savings in a simple banking blunder.
Stephen Tibbs wanted to transfer his pension in the UK to help pay off his Australian mortgage so that his wife and three boys are not left with debts.
‘I want to set up my wife for the long term so that she’s financially-able to stand and manage the three boys – get them through,’ Mr Tibbs told A Current Affair.
But after transferring almost $200,000 through the platform Wise to their own account a couple of months ago, they could find no trace of the money: all because a single digit in their bank identifying code was wrong.
Instead, the money ended up in a completely different branch.
Stephen and Michelle Tibbs (pictured) feared they had lost nearly $200,000 after a bank blunder saw the money transferred to the wrong account
‘So the money was deposited into a National Australia Bank Account, according to Wise and we have the receipt to show that Wise deposited it into a National Australia Bank account,’ Stephen’s wife, Michelle said.
But when Mrs Tibbs tacked down the NAB branch in question she was told by the manager that he could not help.
‘Spoke to the branch manager there, and unofficially he told us that there was not an account number linked to that branch,’ she said.
The couple initiated a recall of the payment through Wise, but nearly two months on they were left exasperated as the money was still missing.
‘Wise is apparently the only people who can help us and as of Friday last week they told us the recall process had taken six-to-eight weeks and they’d had no response from the NAB so that was the end of the amount of time they could help us,’ Mrs Tibbs said.
NAB also told the couple, as they weren’t a customer with the bank, it could not help them either.
In a statement Wise confirmed they could not help.
‘Unfortunately, Wise has no control over a customer inputting incorrect account details,’ the company said.
‘Similarly, if an account isn’t active with a bank, Wise has no visibility on that.’
However, the story has a happy ending.
Mr Tibbs (pictured with family), who has stage four brain cancer, wanted to transfer his pension in the UK to help pay off his Australian mortgage so that his wife and three boys are not left with debts
After A Current Affair got involved, NAB was able to successfully locate the money and safely deposit it into the Tibbs’ mortgage account.
‘We’re delighted we were able to recover Mr Tibbs’ funds and have safely sent them on to where he originally intended,’ said Jocelyn Turner, NAB’s executive general manager of customer resolution and remediation.
‘The time it took and the experience Mr Tibbs had wasn’t good enough and we’re determined to do better.
‘Our team is now looking at how we get to the right answer quicker when customers accidentally transfer money to the wrong account.’
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