In April, I paid £1,000 to a John Lewis Partnership Card that I share with my wife. It is underwritten by HSBC. The payment was not accepted as it coincided with the card being reported stolen. Instead of being bounced back, it appears the payment was “lost” before it was “found” over five weeks later.
HSBC sent my bank, Santander, a cheque for the amount and a letter briefly detailing what had happened. The cheque did not have my name on it, only a row of asterisks, and Santander would therefore not credit it to my account.
I have now been without my £1,000 for nearly three months.
MAS, London
HSBC claims that the payment went astray not because the card had been reported stolen but because you had keyed in the wrong account details. If this is the case, it’s extraordinary you weren’t told and bizarre that HSBC decided to refund the money by the near obsolete method of a cheque, especially one with no name on it. The bank says there was a row of asterisks since there was not a “clear surname” on the payment it received from you. This, it says, is “procedure” and it’s up to the recipient bank if it accepts it. Unsurprisingly, Santander did not.
“Issuing cheques with asterisks in place of a payee name is not in line with industry standards and not something that Santander recognises,” it says. “Cheque payee details should match the account names.”
As soon as the Observer intervened HSBC managed to return your funds electronically and told us: “The payment has now been returned, along with a £200 gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused and time taken to resolve the issue.”
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