Josh, the owner of an industrial unit, asked us to review his case after a banking error disrupted his business operations and cash flow.
What happened
Josh, the owner of a well-known small industrial unit in his town, ran into issues when his bank made a mistake. It wrongly ‘bounced’ a cheque that was supposed to go to one of Josh’s main suppliers.
Because of this, the supplier cancelled Josh’s credit line, hurting his cash flow and impacting his day-to-day operations.
A few weeks later, the bank paid the cheque, and the credit line was re-opened. But by this point, Josh had experienced a lot of stress because of the mistake.
For one, he’d lost some business. Secondly, he had to waste time contacting suppliers and customers to fight back against rumours about money issues.
When Josh complained to his bank about how the mistake damaged his reputation and took up his time, it didn’t offer him compensation. It said it had already fixed things by paying the cheque. Unhappy with their response, Josh contacted us.
What we said
The bank told us it hadn’t said anything to Josh’s supplier about why the cheque was bounced. For this reason, we didn’t hold the bank responsible for the damage to Josh’s business’s reputation.
But we still believed that it was important for the bank to recognise the distress and inconvenience it had caused Josh.
Considering the full circumstances, we upheld Josh’s complaint and asked the bank to compensate Josh fairly for the mistake and the impact it had on his business.