I have always regarded banks as a special status companies. Legal entities that are strangers to stupid errors.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I had to be corrected by a UK retail bank.

So what happened? I requested a number of payments to be made by BACS. I duly wrote a letter, crated a nice table and listed all beneficiaries’ names, amounts, bank account details in separate columns. It looked very good.

I faxed the letter ( the same way I did for the last couple of months) and rested assured that everybody will get their money on time.

I had to check something in my Internet Banking a couple of days after. To my greatest surprise I saw a strangely large amount being paid to one of the beneficiaries. Quick investigation in the middle of the night ( how conveniently their customer service was jot 24/7) and I found a very silly mistake made by the bank. They had paid the beneficiary an amount equal to the numbers in the bank account sort code.

The only logical explanation was to conclude that human error was the culprit. OK, but how can I be certain the bank has not made mistakes with my previous fax payments?! Do you expect your bank to make similar errors when handling your cash? I don’t think so!

Unfortunately we can pray the banks don’t make any mistakes.