I don't know what the law says about this, but here's what I'd do:

1. If you have legal insurance, contact them asap and ask their advice. They'll probably write a scary letter to the guys you paid by accident and that will settle the issue. If you don't have legal insurance:

2. Contact UBS and tell them the error happened because of their system, and you insist they'll find the solution. The issue will be getting to the right person at UBS, I think

3. Send a registered letter to the guys you paid by accident, detailing the event in brief, and telling them that if they don't pay you back by date X, you'll seek legal action.

4. If all the above doesn't work, go to a real lawyer and see what legal options you have.

Thank you, Nir!

I don't have legal isurance yet, but have already contacted my insurance company for more details about its coverage in English. From what I understood in Switzerland it's one of 'must have' insurances. So if not for this particular case, but the potential future ones I will be covered.

I have already sent an enquiry to my account manager at UBS. If don't get a proper response from them, will go to their office in person and as per your advice will demand them to propose a solution for me.

After seeing the UBS account manager will probably contact that Zurich bar which has received my CHF 274 payment by accident. I assume my letter should be in German, therefore will wait for UBS guidelines on what should be indicated there before moving on with the translation.

It is technically theft (certainly the case in England and there are many referenced legal cases) to hold on to money that is wrongly transferred to you.

I would ask the police politely and see what they say. If, however the law here isn't the same, I would just pay the CHF274 that you still owe and move on.

If what Nir suggests doesn`t work, you better move on as Nick suggests.

In case your current insurance doesn`t cover legal support, getting an insurance now, will not provide you support for anything that happened before the starting date of the insurance, but I guess thats just telling the obvious.

It is not theft in Switzerland, if the person receiving the money does not use it. I got accounts that I check once a year and get only notice at the end of each year. So if it were theft, it would be easy to make me a thief, just transfer some money to my account and have me arrested. Luckily that is not the law/case here in Switzerland.

ThomasNL is right about getting a legal insurance now won't do you any good. Usually there is even a several months period for cases to be covered.

I disagree with Lida N, that a legal insurance is a must have. Law is much simpler than in many other countries and therefore a legal insurance is of less importance than say in the US of A.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but to your points made. IMHO you are in the end responsible for the wrong transfer. You accept, that you did not check the payment and just pressed the apporve button.

As you seem to know, who got the money, I would suggest to write them a kindly worded letter and send them the information needed to transfer the money. Give them a reasonable period to act (30 days) and send a second letter after said period threatening legal action (this letter by registered mail).

Good luck!

It's an unjust enrichment case. Write a letter citing art. 62 of the Swiss code of obligations and ask for your money back.

Dear all, 

thanks for the recommendations. I've got a response from UBS - they are saying that there is no error from their side despite the fact that I've sent them a print-screen. As a client I'm dissapointed by such a treatment. Will probably take my mob phone and that payment slip to scan it ogether with my client manager. I at least want them to initiate the aministrative case intenally, so that other people don't suffer from the same problem.

With regards to that greedy Zurich bar - will send them a letter by registered mail with my banking details and request to restitute my payment within 30 days (thank you, Alan S, for the idea regarding the time-frame). 

knowing about art 62 of the Swiss code of obligations is also extremely helpful, thank you, Carol A, for advising.

Will share the outcome of all these exercises here.

Hi Lida,

I appear to have found the same bug in the UBS banking app.  I only ever scan the payment slips (I'm far too lazy to type them in!), and it turns out that one of our rent payments went to some strange bank account in Zurich.  I only tracked this down tonight after trawling through old statements and doing a reconciliation with our landlords managing agent.  The payment that went to some other account was last December.  I will call UBS in the morning.  There definitely seems to be some faults with the payment scanner in the iPhone version of the mobile banking app.

Good luck with getting your money back.

Regards,

Graeme 

Graeme, rent payment must be more unpleasant case than mine. Let me know what UBS resoonds you. In my case they told me that I have to contactvthat company directly. I've sent them a notification letter last week and asked to return the money within the next 30 days. Am waiting for their reaction. The company name is Cohen. Is it the same as yours?

Hi Lisa, It looks like the issue may be more generic - my payment went to another beneficiary. I have an account at one of the cantonal banks, and the e-banking app does scan the payslips, but also makes you add the beneficiary name manually - I find this really annoying, but now I think I understand why they require it! :) It seems like a flaw in the UBS application in that if it looks up the account number and name, and yours truly just trusts the technology to do it correctly and clicks approve, then it can cause problems (I did studiously check the first few times I used the scanner, but it had always worked flawlessly for me in the past. so I became lazy with my cross checks).  With the rent payment slips - we get 12 months worth at a time, and I just scan them all and schedule them at once, so I guess I missed the error at the time, and it has taken us a while for the rental agents to highlight the problem, as they were having problems with their systems too.  A bit of a nightmare really.

Judging by your original post, it sounds like UBS did try to ask the recipient for the funds back? Is that right?  It was only after they refused that UBS recommended you contact them yourself?  Thanks for the information, and to everyone else for the ideas and guidance!

Yes, I've used UBS's standard payment enquiry form and several days after that they've infirmed me that the beneficiaries' bank, postfinance, informed them that the beneficiary refused to return the funds. After that they've proposed me to contact the beneficiary directly and gave their address.

also UBS denied any errors from their side, despite the proof pictures and print-screens that I've provided to them. It can make sense for two of us to submit a collective claim to them, because the error happened due to their technology bug. When it comes from two clients, it's definitely much more powerful.

You could consider seeing if 20minutes or Le News is interested in running the story?

Generally the newspaper will tell the people involved that they are about to run the story, could work wonders.

Another idea is to write to the CEO of UBS, name will be all over google.. S/He won't likely read it but it will likely get a response from a CEO Complaints type team.

Then go to the bar in Zurich, run up a bill of more than 300chf and run away without paying, that will be fun and give you a deep sense of satifaction.

John H, thank you :) The idea of ordering something or the same amount in that Zurich bank was actually th first one when they've rejected to returnt the money :))))

if other methods don't work it would probably be worth to follow your advices re' media involvement and aletter to the UBS CEO.

I actually got a voice-mail from that bar. It's all in German, therefore I had to ask my friends to translate it. it seems that he asks me to send him the red paiment slip, so that he can process the payment through th multimat. Any ideas where I can get the template for it?

I am having a similar problem only mine is with the Multimat. I paid my apartment deposit 6 months ago and the regie has only just flagged in December that they dont have the money in their account. I showed them the bank statement to prove I had paid it and they have come back and said they dont have it. It is their word against mine as the bank is saying that the money was transferred.

I am now checking with them whether the bank details on the slip were correct. But if this has now gone to a wrong beneficiary how can I find out who it is? This is a sum of 9000CHF so very worrying.

Any advice on what I should do?

chf9000!!! yaiiks! if you have legal protection insurance, now is the time to call them and get help

@lida: how did your issue end?

Hi Lucy,

I would recommend contacting your bank.  In our case, I contacted my account manager UBS and they were able to contact the recipient of the payment (via the recipients bank).  In our case, the recipient of the funds returned them upon request, so we thankfully did not need to escalate the matter further.  I know how I felt about 3.5k, so I can only imagine how you're feeling about 9! :( 

Good luck!  

Graeme 

Always with every bank, when you make a payment , you see all the details that you either scanned or input. After making the instruction, always i mean always print a copy, so you can prove that the payment was instructed for a specific account and invoice.

Now, if you scanned a payment slip, after you confirm, before approving, you should have see that the beneficiary was not the same on the payment slip, its easy as that, so it was unfortunate but your mistake.

However your only recourse is to contact the bar direcly requesting they reimburse you again, but there is not much else you can do.

Unfortunatle, but everyone that reads this post, always double check your bank instruction before confirming or verifying payment. And even more importantly print out a copy, and if you want ot be more sure, post date if a few days, so you can print and check again the instruction. If it goes ot a wrong receipient, then its the fault of the Bank, as you have a printout proof.

Without, no bank making payment that you authorized with many security settings and verification,  is not responsible for poor attention or mistakes.

Let me add, you said you scanned it several times and you seen it was wrong?

Really, next time just type in the BCV/GIRO reference number, and the CCP number as on the slip, and the banking system should recognize the beneficiary. If its not correct, why then continue to make payment to the wrong beneficiary?

Perhaps you should check posts on forums (with as much care as you claim to check your payment details with) before posting a reply... Then you might understand the situation better. 

Hi guys,

A short updateregarding my situation: I've sent a letter to that bar by using "receiving with a signature" option, so that I had a confirmation that it was delivered. In this letter I've informed them that I've made thos payment by mistake and ask them to return the funds to my account. I've also attached the print out of the transaction from the e-banking.

After that the guy called me and left a voice mail in Swiss German :) I went to bank and asked them to help me with the translation :) Apparently the guy has requested to send him a red payment slip as he needs it to makea transaction in the Post Finance. 

So I had to request UBS to produce these red payment slips for me and send another letter to this guy.

After that the guy has returned the funds but took chf 30 as a comission for the transaction. I went to my bank again to ask about this comission and they've reimbursed it to me with the key club points.

So now my issue is resolved.

@Dave G, I'm afraid your comments aren't really relevant to my situation.

Graeme, I'm very glad to hear that you've got your money back.

Lucy, wish you good luck with your case. With such an amount of money I would recommend you to go directly to your bank to see them in person and ask them to help you to resolve the situation. Of course legal insurance would be helpful if you have one.

Im sorry, but I will quote you exactly and my comments are relevant

Quote '(we've tried to scan it several times again with the same wrong results - the application has recognized the numbers wrongly and changed the beneficiary from the medical services provider to a bar in Zurich) therefore the funds were sent to a wrong beneficiary.)

Allan S is correct.

Im just wondering might be a stupid question but if you scanned it twice or even more that means you got the numbers right. so doesnt that mean the sender of the bill is the one who wrote the wrong code? I normally type mine in coz that scan function has totally refused to work for me but  when I mistake even one number it doesnt go through so that's why Im wondering.

Dave, are you trying to prove that you know my case better than I? :)))

We have scanned it several times two months after the payment to check what was the problem - so it was TEST scanning, we didn't proceed with the same mistaken payment second time. The bank representative witnessed this error and was very surprised that such things can happen In their system. I was told that the issue is reported and their programmers are supposed to address it.

Marcy, that's the case - the system didn't recognize the numbers correct, it changed them after scanning and pulled the wrong beneficiary. When something is pulled by the official bank application you generally don't expect it to be wrong and don't check. Now, based on mine, Graeme's and Lucy's cases w all know that such things can happen and will definitely doube-check all details before submitting the payment.

OMG, dispite the scanner problem, you must have know that before verifying or approving the payment you seen the Beneficiary was not the correct one?

If not, then certainly its the banks fault.

Still always, when I make a payment list, I always print the 'verification' of payment and doulbe check the beneficiaries, 100%. Because I dont trust employees or scanners, its always best to check a second time that payment is to the intended recepient, and on the authorized date. 

Been here 20 years and I never ever made or approved a payment incorrectly, yeah I have approved about 10,000 or more. I think your screen prints and other just proved you made the final mistake of approving and verifying the scanned error.