Broken Halifax ATM never dispensed £200 – now I’m out of pocket

ON OCTOBER 4, I attempted to make a cash withdrawal from the Halifax branch in Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

It took two attempts before the machine accepted my PIN. I asked for £200, but the screen went white with two blue circles. Then it went black with lots of writing.

My card came out — but no cash was dispensed. After waiting a couple of minutes, I went into the branch. A member of staff tried my cards in one of the machines inside, but had no joy.

I gave her my PIN and she then tried the card in the outside machine I had used. She came back with a receipt to show me £200 had been taken out.

I did not receive this money, and so wrote to complain. Despite being with this bank for 50 years, it’s thrown out my complaint. Mrs P. N., North Humberside.

Your 50 years of loyalty to Halifax was rewarded with the tersest of responses.

In three short paragraphs, a customer services member asserted there was no error with your transaction or the cash machine. Yet your mini statement clearly shows a £200 withdrawal on that day.

A number of issues concerned me — not least the Halifax staff member using your PIN to test the card outside.

I am not accusing any Halifax member of staff of dishonesty, but this does strike me as unusual.

Halifax initially sent me a statement, saying: ‘If there had been a fault with the ATM preventing cash from being dispensed, then her account would not have been debited.

‘It is unclear as to what happened to the cash after she requested it from the ATM and before she entered the branch, as there is no CCTV outside this branch.’

The lack of CCTV is, I believe, key. I have also used cash machines where there have been clicks and clunks. on one occasion, I waited for a full two minutes before a series of screwed-up tenners were forced out of the machine.

I pushed Halifax, as I see no reason why you would have been dishonest. The most likely explanation is the cash took longer than usual to be dispensed and was then picked up by a passer-by while you were inside the branch.

Alternatively, the machine may have been tampered with by a crook, who took the money once you had entered the branch.

I told Halifax I’d recommend that you take your case to the Financial ombudsman Service. At this stage, it relented.

Citing your long history as a customer, but not admitting any responsibility, it refunded £200.

I HAVE been in a dispute with HM Revenue & Customs over my tax since 2015. I am 63 years old and have worked for 43 years full-time, paying tax and National Insurance. But HMRC says I owe £645 for Jobseeker’s Allowance.

I did apply for the allowance, but declined to receive it, as we have savings, so thought it was morally wrong to get it. Mrs G. W., Essex.

YourS is a typical case illustrating why people get so frustrated and angry with HMrC.

Big companies such as Google get away with paying a pittance in tax. Celebrities and footballers are allowed to dodge tax using elaborate avoidance schemes.

Yet ordinary people can get caught in a web where their pleas are ignored and their rights trampled on.

HMrC claims to have sent a tax calculation, which you say you never received.

When it chased the supposed underpaid tax, you sent a very clear explanation of what had happened with the Jobseeker’s Allowance. But HMrC appears to have ignored this and continued to pursue you.

Perhaps if you played for a Premier League football team or appeared on TV, someone might have read your letters and acted on them.

HMrC says your case has now been sorted out. A spokesman admits ‘We made a complete mess of this’ and ‘there is no mitigation I can offer in our defence’.

As you said, you did not owe any tax, so HMrC will stop chasing you. It will also pay you a small amount of compensation.

But I can’t help feeling that these tactics of sending repeated reminders, rather than properly investigating a complaint, smack of the tactics of a dodgy debt collector, rather than a taxpayerfunded, Government-run body.

I HAVE been trying to trace a work pension scheme I paid into from the early Seventies.

I tried the Pension Tracing Service, which referred me to Prudential, but it has no records.

I joined Ferranti Ltd, of Wickentree Lane, Failsworth, Manchester M35 9AY, in 1972 and left to have my daughter in August 1979. My maiden name was Collinge.

I know I paid into a scheme for most of my time at Ferranti, and it was quite a bit of my weekly income. I heard the company went bankrupt not long after I left.

I was 24 at the time and am now 61. Unfortunately, the old wage slips have been thrown away. Susan Ogden, Manchester.

I HAVE taken the unusual step of publishing your current and your original name in full at your request. This is in the hope that a former colleague may remember you and be able to help in your quest for your pension.

Prudential, which has some of the remnants of the Ferranti scheme, has checked its archives, but could not find you anywhere under either of your names.

It has checked with Equiniti, which is the partial administrator of the Ferranti pension scheme. However, it does not hold any record of you.

Incidentally, Ferranti uK went bust in 1993 following a fraud scandal, having raided its pension scheme for £15 million two years previously. However, the scheme did still have a surplus of around £90 million.

Prudential also contacted Law Debenture, the previous insurers of the scheme, to check if it had any details of a possible previous claim — again, to no avail.

unfortunately, you do not have any documentary evidence of your scheme membership.

I have one inkling of what may have happened. When you left your job at 24, it is possible your pension contributions were returned to you. This was fairly common practice with young women who married and left jobs back in the Seventies.

So, it may be that there is no longer any pension there.

You are now hoping to find other pension scheme members through social media.

If any readers have any clues that may help you, they can write to me and I will pass them on.