Family loses life savings with a simple mistake when transferring a large sum of money on the Wise platform to the wrong bank account
- $200,000 of life savings went to the wrong bank account
- All due to an incorrect digit in the bank identification number
A father battling stage four brain cancer lost $200,000 of his life savings in a simple banking mistake.
Stephen Tibbs, who has stage four brain cancer, wanted to transfer his UK pension to help pay his Australian mortgage so his wife and three children would stay out of debt.
“I want to help my wife out long term so she can support herself financially and manage the three kids, get them through,” Tibbs said. a current affair.
But after transferring almost $200.00 through the Wise platform to his own account a couple of months ago, they couldn’t find a trace of the money: all because a single digit in his bank identification code was wrong.
Instead, the money ended up in a completely different branch.
Stephen and Michelle Tibbs (pictured) feared they had lost nearly $200,000 after a bank error caused money to be transferred to the wrong account.
“So the money was deposited into an Australian national bank account, according to Wise, and we have the receipt showing Wise deposited it into an Australian national bank account,” Stephen’s wife Michelle said.
But when Ms. Tibbs noticed the NAB branch in question, the manager told her he couldn’t help.
“I spoke to the branch manager there, and off the record he told us that there was no account number linked to that branch,” he said.
The couple initiated a withdrawal of the payment through Wise, but almost two months later they were exasperated that the money was still missing.
“Apparently, Wise is the only person who can help us, and as of Friday of last week, they told us that the withdrawal process had taken six to eight weeks and they had not heard back from the NAB, so that it was the end of the amount of It’s time you could help us,’ said Ms. Tibbs.
NAB also told the couple that since they were not customers of the bank, it could not help them either.
In a statement, Wise confirmed that they could not help.
“Unfortunately, Wise has no control over a customer entering incorrect account details,” the company said.
“Similarly, if an account isn’t active at a bank, Wise doesn’t have visibility into that.”
However, the story has a happy ending.
Mr Tibbs (pictured with his family), who has stage four brain cancer, wanted to transfer his UK pension to help pay his Australian mortgage so his wife and three children would stay out of debt.
After A Current Affair became involved, NAB was able to successfully locate the money and deposit it safely into the Tibbs’ mortgage account.
“We are delighted that we were able to recover the funds from Mr. Tibbs and safely send them to where they were originally intended,” said Jocelyn Turner, NAB’s executive general manager of client resolution and remediation.
‘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 to get to the right answer faster when customers accidentally transfer money to the wrong account.”
