Payment problem with no support on Sunday

Dozens help
#1

Hi Rob and all,

I bought a car yesterday and made the payment from my dozens account. The payment is showing as cleared on my side, but more than 16 hours later the dealer is saying the payment hasn’t landed in their account. He’s now saying if the money hasn’t cleared by later today they will repossess the vehicle, which is obviously less than ideal.

We’ve both double and triple checked the account details, and I don’t understand why this hasn’t cleared through faster payments? Is this an issue with clear bank? Or an automated fraud or AML security feature kicking in?

Either way it’s incredibly frustrating for this to be happening, especially with no support available on Sunday. My car purchase is now threatened as a direct result of dozens being unable to complete my payment transaction, and there’s no one around to support or look into it. It’s not that unusual to have a need for banking services on a Sunday so dozens’ unavailability today is potentially proving very detrimental.

Any ideas what’s going on? Anyone there at dozens to help stop my new car getting towed away please?!

#2

Sorry you’re in a bit of a tight spot. Not an official response (I’m just a customer like you), but -

Any FP can be delayed outside of ‘business hours’, especially if (as I suspect it will be) its a largeer payment to an account you’ve not used before. In all likelihood Dozens would only be able to tell you to wait until Monday if there were someone available.

Given this, it seems to me that proof you have sent payment (ie show them the app) has to be enough - since any payment from any bank via FP could be held up like this.

For what it’s worth, I’ve just sent a small amount from Dozens to another account, and it was near instant. This suggests they aren’t having general FP issues today, so maybe your funds will show.

#3

Payments can take until the end of the next working day by law. This is most likely to happen if it’s a large amount and/or a new payee

#4

Thanks for your comments guys. I went on the Faster Payments website and couldn’t find any reference to the end of a working day, it just says “within two hours” although maybe the working day thing is hidden in the smallprint somewhere.

I also did a test transaction sending money to myself and that settled immediately.

As you suggest Dan I’ve sent screenshots of the payment and me reporting the transaction, hopefully that will suffice until tomorrow! :grimacing:

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#5

Has specific info including end of next business day rule. Maybe show them this too if they’re insisting it should be instant?

#6

Ahh that’s great, thanks Dan, not sure how I missed that. Much appreciated.

#7

It does seem to happen. I’ve had it happen twice now where the transaction has been about £2k, both times to one of my own accounts.

It would be handy if they had someone around who could do these sort of approvals at the weekend, appreciate full 24-7 CS is not possible at the moment.

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#8

I’ve had delays twice on incoming transactions to Dozens.

Once was £100 spending money (before the migration to ClearBank) which got caught in the ether for a good few hours. I was so used to it arriving immediately that I contacted support (who seemed rather dismissive - basically go away and come back if it’s not here tomorrow).

Once was a bigger sum for the bumper bonds issuance. I sent 1p first to make sure: immediate and no problems. The bigger amount was caught up for the better part of a day: most unsettling.

Basically, this happens. It’s annoying, but it’s what happens when the government looks to financial service provides to police the system. :man_shrugging:

Maybe this is something that Dozens could work on though - proof of payment? In the early days of Monzo, there were lots of folk who were v keen for a ‘statement’ for one transaction. Perhaps a PDF or something - with all the reference numbers - would be helpful in a) differentiating Dozens and b) more importantly, providing some comfort for folk expecting to receive the funds?

Having said all that, though, the problem does seem to be with the receiving bank. Which brings me back to an auto-generated confirmation of funds transfer with the FPS references etc that the recipient can pass over to their bank to debug? I think that’s all customer services could do, anyway?

#9

Thanks guys, panic over the payment has cleared! :partying_face:Wouldn’t have been stressing so much if there wasn’t the dealer breathing down my neck about taking it back. Thanks for your comments.

That said, this isn’t the first time a payment from my dozens account has been delayed, and it sounds like a few others have experienced this too. Hopefully this will clear up with clear bank and visa, but it does discourage me from adopting dozens as my main current account at this point in time.

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#10

The dealer is being somewhat ridiculous. If they wanted payment security, they should have paid the fee for a card payment. They can’t accept a faster payment and then bug you before it should even have definitely cleared under the scheme rules!

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