Thousands hit again in bank double charging scandal
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Thursday October 29 2009
BANK of Ireland was accused of being "hopelessly out of touch" last night after it admitted it had double-charged its own customers for the second month in a row.
The bank has launched a major investigation after thousands of customers were again mistakenly overcharged on their Laser card transactions.
The Financial Regulator also said it was going to carry out a probe into the latest incident, which follows a similar error that occurred in September and affected 160,000 customers.
On Tuesday, large numbers of clients were unable to withdraw cash from ATMs, while others found themselves 'overdrawn'.
The bank admitted a "file was run twice", which meant that anyone who had made a Laser transaction had their account debited twice for the same transaction.
Bank of Ireland is refusing to say how many customers have been affected by the blunder this time around, but said it has informed the regulator about the mess-up.
A spokeswoman for the bank denied it was deliberately hiding the numbers affected to soften the negative impact of the mistake.
The bank insisted it is confident that it has now corrected the overcharging, and affected customers' balances should now be accurate.
The spokeswoman said the bank will conduct a full technical review, although "it may be some time" before the cause of the error is established.
She stressed that the incident has not affected standing orders or direct debits.
Ironic
After the discovery of last month's problem, repayments made by the bank included all overdraft fees and penalties charged to customers who were put into the red as a result of the erroneous charges on their cards.
Fine Gael deputy finance spokesman Kieran O'Donnell TD has called on the Financial Regulator to investigate the second incident of overcharging on Laser payments involving Bank of Ireland accounts.
"It's ironic that this happened while the NAMA legislation is being scrutinised in the Dail.
"The fact that Bank of Ireland accounts were overcharged on Laser payments for the second time shows the banking sector is still hopelessly out of touch," he said.
Mr O'Donnell also accused Bank of Ireland of taking a "sloppy" attitude towards its customers.
A spokeswoman for the Financial Regulator confirmed that it was going to investigate the latest incident.
"The consumer protection code requires that firms speedily, efficiently and fairly correct charging errors and notify all affected customers," she said.
"It is important that where errors occur they are corrected and any remedial action undertaken where appropriate.
"As part of our follow up we engage with the firm to establish why this error occurred."
- Charlie Weston Personal Finance Editor
Irish Independent
