Family loses life savings with a simple mistake by transferring a huge sum of money on the Wise platform to the wrong bank account
- $200,000 in life savings went to the wrong bank account
- All because of an incorrect digit in the bank identification number
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A father battling stage four brain cancer lost $200,000 in savings due to a simple bank blunder.
Stephen Tibbs wanted to transfer his UK pension to pay off his Australian mortgage so his wife and three boys wouldn’t be left in debt.
“I want to set my wife up for the long haul so she’s financially able to support and manage the three boys — to get them through,” Mr. Tibbs said. A current situation.
But after transferring nearly $200,000 to their own account through the Wise platform a few months ago, they couldn’t find a trace of the money: all because a single digit in their bank ID was wrong.
Instead, the money ended up in a completely different branch.
Stephen and Michelle Tibbs (pictured) feared they’d lost nearly $200,000 after a bank blunder sent the money to the wrong account
“So the money was deposited into a National Australia Bank Account, according to Wise and we have the receipt showing that Wise deposited it into a National Australia Bank Account,” said Michelle, Stephen’s wife.
But when Ms. Tibbs tacked the NAB branch in question, she was told by the manager that he couldn’t help.
“I spoke to the branch manager there and he said unofficially that there was no account number associated with that branch,” she said.
The couple initiated a recall of the payment through Wise, but nearly two months later, they were annoyed that the money was still missing.
“Wise are apparently the only people who can help us and as of last Friday they told us that the recall process had taken six to eight weeks and they had 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, since they were not customers at the bank, it couldn’t help them either.
In a statement, Wise confirmed they were unable to help.
Unfortunately, Wise has no control over a customer who enters incorrect account information.
“Similarly, if an account is not active with a bank, Wise has no visibility into it.”
However, the story has a happy ending.
Mr Tibbs (pictured with family), who has stage four brain cancer, wanted to transfer his UK pension to pay off his Australian mortgage so his wife and three boys would not be left in debt
After A Current Affair got involved, NAB was able to successfully locate the money and deposit it safely into Tibbs’ mortgage account.
“We are pleased that we were able to recover Mr. Tibbs’ funds and safely route them to where he originally intended,” said Jocelyn Turner, NAB’s executive general manager of customer resolution and recovery.
“The time it took and the experience Mr. Tibbs had was not good enough and we are determined to do better.
‘Our team is now looking at how we can get to the right answer faster when customers accidentally transfer money to the wrong account.’