Helping someone else unravel their mistake?

[mmswm]

If Hanna calls you back, I used to work in banking in the research department.

Hanna needs to call her bank and have the check researched.  Where did the check come in from?  What bank? What bank and/or account was it credited to?

She needs to research this on her end and stop bugging you for which you cannot help her in the first place.

Someone got this check. Someone deposited it.  Her bank can research it and find out as much as possible on their end and she might still need to pursue it further.

I second this.  I worked in deposit operations research doing exactly this.  We can track down every move that check made, what banks it went through and where it ended up. 

[Winterlight]

OP, you've done all you can reasonably be expected to do.

However, (if you haven't already) I think you should make a note of what has happened thus far, and inform your supoervisor in person or via email.

Ya never know; could be something shady going on - not with Hanna but ..........well, ya never know. 

Agreed. This is a cover yourself moment.

[CakeBeret]

If Hanna calls you back, I used to work in banking in the research department.

Hanna needs to call her bank and have the check researched.  Where did the check come in from?  What bank? What bank and/or account was it credited to?

She needs to research this on her end and stop bugging you for which you cannot help her in the first place.

Someone got this check. Someone deposited it.  Her bank can research it and find out as much as possible on their end and she might still need to pursue it further.

She has already done this. According to the last call I got from her, the check had been deposited into Some Account, and Hanna thinks that the some involved bank took the funds from Some Account and somehow put them into my account. Which, within the scope of my banking knowledge, is ridiculous.

[mrkitty]

I am deeply confused as to how any of this could remotely be possible...did the bank tell her this? Or is she guessing at that last part? I hope she has some evidence of this before she starts making slanderous accusations against you/your company??(!)

I'm thinking now (or sometime very soon, if this continues) might be a good time to escalate the harassment to Hanna's supervisor....I think she's either a) incompetent or b) trying to pin her mistake on you or c) trying to cover up something.

This is starting to really not smell good. 

[AustenFan]

Hanna sounds like she's a few digits short an account number, if you know what I mean. 

The bank would have been able to advise her whose account the cheque was cashed to, and the steps needed to recover the funds if the cheque was improperly cashed. It's not a complicated process, and at this point she shouldn't be involving you further. If I were you I would just advise her that you have no record of receiving it and she will need to follow up with the bank. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Banks make mistakes (I have had entire deposits lost before, and $16,000 incorrectly deposited to my account), but they're always traceable and easily remedied if it was an internal error.

[kareng57]

I agree with PPs - I used to work in the Finance department of my company.  Yes, occasionally we had situations where customers wrote cheques on a since-closed bank account, or had confused us with a similarly-named company.  These were fairly easy to resolve.

However, there was never any way to "prove" that we never received a missing cheque, and lots of customers just didn't seem to understand this.  At that stage is was truly out of our hands, and many just didn't seem to get the concept of "you need to check with your bank about this".

[mmswm]

If Hanna calls you back, I used to work in banking in the research department.

Hanna needs to call her bank and have the check researched.  Where did the check come in from?  What bank? What bank and/or account was it credited to?

She needs to research this on her end and stop bugging you for which you cannot help her in the first place.

Someone got this check. Someone deposited it.  Her bank can research it and find out as much as possible on their end and she might still need to pursue it further.

She has already done this. According to the last call I got from her, the check had been deposited into Some Account, and Hanna thinks that the some involved bank took the funds from Some Account and somehow put them into my account. Which, within the scope of my banking knowledge, is ridiculous.

Well......

You'd be surprised how badly things can get screwed up at the bank level.  I could tell you some doozies if my sense of ethics allowed it (somehow, telling stories that may, or may not, be identifiable by a banking customer just seems wrong, and I'd rather err on the side of caution).  It is possible for things to happen the way she's trying to describe, as I've seen something similar happen, but extremely unlikely. I've seen something like that happen once after years of deposit operations research involving millions of transactions.

[Lynnv]

She has already done this. According to the last call I got from her, the check had been deposited into Some Account, and Hanna thinks that the some involved bank took the funds from Some Account and somehow put them into my account. Which, within the scope of my banking knowledge, is ridiculous.

Well......

You'd be surprised how badly things can get screwed up at the bank level.  I could tell you some doozies if my sense of ethics allowed it (somehow, telling stories that may, or may not, be identifiable by a banking customer just seems wrong, and I'd rather err on the side of caution).  It is possible for things to happen the way she's trying to describe, as I've seen something similar happen, but extremely unlikely. I've seen something like that happen once after years of deposit operations research involving millions of transactions.

I agree.  I have seen something like this happen twice.  In 10 years of banking customer service.  And the circumstances in each case were so out of the norm that replicating the problem would take both time and effort.   But even if, in some wild series of errors and wackiness, you determine that this is what happened, she still needs to go through the bank to fix it.

I had a customer once who had written a check to a car dealer for $500.00 for a deposit on a car.  The dealers bank misencoded it for $50.00.   He noticed it and wrote the dealer a check for $450.00 to make up the difference.   Meanwhile, the bank noticed the out of balance situation, determined the problem, and sent through an error correction to fix the problem.   The guy had a huge problem getting his money back.  So, even if by some wild chance she is right (unlikely though that may be), she needs to deal with the bank to fix it.   

[oceanus]

She has already done this. According to the last call I got from her, the check had been deposited into Some Account, and Hanna thinks that the some involved bank took the funds from Some Account and somehow put them into my account. Which, within the scope of my banking knowledge, is ridiculous.

Well......

You'd be surprised how badly things can get screwed up at the bank level.  I could tell you some doozies if my sense of ethics allowed it (somehow, telling stories that may, or may not, be identifiable by a banking customer just seems wrong, and I'd rather err on the side of caution).  It is possible for things to happen the way she's trying to describe, as I've seen something similar happen, but extremely unlikely. I've seen something like that happen once after years of deposit operations research involving millions of transactions.

I agree.  I have seen something like this happen twice.  In 10 years of banking customer service.  And the circumstances in each case were so out of the norm that replicating the problem would take both time and effort.   But even if, in some wild series of errors and wackiness, you determine that this is what happened, she still needs to go through the bank to fix it.

I had a customer once who had written a check to a car dealer for $500.00 for a deposit on a car.  The dealers bank misencoded it for $50.00.   He noticed it and wrote the dealer a check for $450.00 to make up the difference.   Meanwhile, the bank noticed the out of balance situation, determined the problem, and sent through an error correction to fix the problem.   The guy had a huge problem getting his money back.  So, even if by some wild chance she is right (unlikely though that may be), she needs to deal with the bank to fix it.

I don't think most people would necessarily be all that surprised that banks make mistakes.  I'm sure lots of people have stories about how a bank messed something up and what a hassle it was to get it straightened out.  The issue is that Hanna keeps bothering OP with the problem, and she needs to deal with the bank (as you said).

[JeanFromBNA]

I think that you're in the clear.  Unless Hanna is the top of the accounting food chain, you might want to suggest that she get help from someone with more experience, if you want to be nice.  Other than that, what else can you do?

[oceanus]

I think that you're in the clear.  Unless Hanna is the top of the accounting food chain, you might want to suggest that she get help from someone with more experience, if you want to be nice.  Other than that, what else can you do?

I don't think OP lacks the proper experience.

Better to just refer Hanna to the bank.

[gramma dishes]

I think that you're in the clear.  Unless Hanna is the top of the accounting food chain, you might want to suggest that she get help from someone with more experience, if you want to be nice.  Other than that, what else can you do?

I don't think OP lacks the proper experience.

Better to just refer Hanna to the bank.

I'm pretty sure that JeanFromBNA meant that Hanna should get advice from someone with more experience within her own company. 

[Slartibartfast]

I can sympathize with her, especially if she's getting the runaround from one (or more) banks.  Somehow it always seems easy for companies to drag their feet and be unhelpful when it's YOUR money which is messed up, but when it's THEIR money they find the time to call you over and over again . . .

That said, it's her problem, not yours.  You've done a good thing in trying to check your accounts, but your verbal "We don't have it" is all she really deserves towards solving her problem.  Don't let her dump her issues on you.

[JeanFromBNA]

I think that you're in the clear.  Unless Hanna is the top of the accounting food chain, you might want to suggest that she get help from someone with more experience, if you want to be nice.  Other than that, what else can you do?

I don't think OP lacks the proper experience.

Better to just refer Hanna to the bank.

I'm pretty sure that JeanFromBNA meant that Hanna should get advice from someone with more experience within her own company. 

Yes.