It's always nice when you look in your bank account and find out you have a little more cheddar in there then you'd thought. Now imagine opening up your statement and seeing, you know, a few thousand bucks that weren't there before:
Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £130 million ($176 million) across 75,000 transactions.
The mistake happened when payments from 2,000 business accounts in the U.K. were processed twice, meaning some employees saw their wages double, while suppliers also got more than they were expecting.
The bank said the duplicate payments were caused by a "scheduling issue" that has now been rectified.
You can imagine the scene for so many people after this "scheduling issue:"
Now, of course, people presumably can't actually legally spend this money, seeing as it's, you know, not theirs. It seems probable, of course, that many people went ahead and did just that, so who knows if, and how, the bank will get it back.
Apparently that's not the only logistical hurdle to recovering the cash:
[The bank] is now trying to recuperate the mistaken payments, many of which have gone into bank accounts operated by rival banks.
