Bank of Scotland have a very serious bug they aren't interested in fixing.

[andrewducker]

Once a month I transfer money into the UK government's tax-free-childcare system. I do it through a standard "Faster Payments" system, and along with the amount, sort code, and account number I'm sending it to, I enter a reference ID. This reference ID is different for each of my children, and makes sure that the money ends up in the right account on the governments' system.

Yesterday, I tried to transfer money from my account (Bank of Scotland), and despite me entering Gideon's reference number, and Gideon's reference number appearing on the confirmation page, Sophia's reference number was what appeared in my transaction history, and the money ended up in Sophia's account.

I thought _I'd_ messed up, so I tried a couple more times. And then I screenshotted the whole process with a £1 transfer, to make sure I wasn't making a basic error of some kind. I'm not sharing the screenshots here, for obvious reasons.

And, no, it's definitely Bank of Scotland sending money with the *previous* reference ID rather than the one you just entered.

Which means that
(a) there's a whole bunch of money in Sophia's account that doesn't need to be there (not the end of the world, I can transfer it back).
(b) more importantly, I can't transfer money into Gideon's account.
(c) Even more importantly, goodness knows how many other users are being hit by this.

I just spent half an hour on the phone with a call handler at Bank of Scotland trying to get them to understand the gravity of the situation, and they have...raised a complaint, escalated it, and will definitely aim to respond to it within 8 weeks. Which seems...suboptimal.

So if anyone knows anyone working at Bank of Scotland, or someone else that might be able to get attention on this issue (I'd settle for a journalist at this point!) then please let me know.

Update: replicated in Firefox and Chrome. Works fine in the Android app.

Update 2: this has been going on for at least a week, according to a friend hit by it a week ago.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Himself banks with BoS.

[andrewducker]

Mostly, people just have one reference. But if you swap between two, then do a test run for a pound before sending full amounts...

[hirez]

Crikey. Show me you only have one test a/c without, etc.

[bens_dad]

Can you demonstrate it with multiple browsers (ideally with different engines, ie both mozilla and google-chrome based) ?

[andrewducker]

Replicated in Firefox and Chrome.

[emperor]

Try the Graun's "Your Problems" column? They seem to manage a steady stream of "$org did sod-all until we got in touch when magically they fixed it"... your.problems@observer.co.uk

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[vivdunstan]

Yup I was just going to suggest the same thing. They're really active at investigating this sort of thing, so I think you'd have a good bet of getting their interest and assistance. Good luck!

[mtbc]

In case you feel inclined, last time I sent a written complaint to BoS (relating to the Lloyds back-end people who deal with US citizen customers) they gave me £50 along with the sorry, we'll fix that. Yeah, their website was never the best but I'd not yet seen it be that bad.

[calimac]

That's pretty grisly, and reminds me of the Monty Python quiz show sketch where the answer marked as correct was the answer to the next question that hadn't been asked yet.

I'm not sure how to parse the combination of a) I can transfer it back, b) I can't transfer money into Gideon's account.

[andrewducker]

Sophia has ended up with three lots of money in her government account, which I can transfer back into my account.
But I have no way to transfer the money into Gideon's account, if I can't work out how to enter his ID.

(Although I've now discovered that it works through the app.)

[bugshaw]

Just had this happen with my Lloyds account. Sent the painter six payments with ref Pay1st through Pay6th but they all went through as 1st. Have been sending money somewhere else monthly with a ref Jan, Feb, Mar etc, but the August payment stayed marked as July despite me typing August in the box.

[andrewducker]

I'm not surprised it hit both bits of the system. Hopefully they sort it soon!

[channelpenguin]

Hmm. If this is happening at 2 diff banks, it suggests a problem with / at BACS itself or with a common code lib. At a guess some (as it turns out, rather breaking) API change that not all banks IT peeps have picked up on. Sigh.

[elwinfortuna]

Lloyds and Bank of Scotland are owned by the same company, Lloyds Banking Group. They've been merged since 2009, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the online banking systems that underpinned them both were essentially the same.

[channelpenguin]

Aha! Yeah ok. Common lib code probably

[andrewducker]

Lloyds took over Bank of Scotland back in 2008, and I'm fairly sure they've had the same website with different skins for at least ten years.

[marymac]

Ooof. And as if the Not-Actually-Tax-free-Childcare wasn't enough of a pain to begin with. From November both of mine will be in work's crèche/after-school and I will be paying by salary sacrifice and it will be so. much. easier.

[azurelunatic]

That's frustrating! I hope someone treats it seriously in an appropriate timescale!

[anef]

8 weeks! That is rubbish!

[draigwen]

For my Nationwide account I can't change the ref once I've added it. Which is fine with friends. But when I needed a different ref for my solicitors I actually ended up creating a new payee with the same bank details as previously but a new ref. Which is okay in this instance as I'm not likely to have to pay them ever again (one hopes!). Not so helpful for you though!

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Based on the description, it smells like a frontend bug. Have you tried clearing cookies, reloading, and trying again with Gideon's number?

[andrewducker]

See the two updates.