Your problems: my pet insurer has paid out... to the wrong account

My dog Zena suffered with chronic vomiting for around two months, so my partner and I took her for multiple visits to different vets and hospitals. After putting her on a hydrolysed diet and giving her three scans, an endoscopy and a colonoscopy they have now diagnosed her with a chronic inflammation of the intestine, and she is on omeprazole.

I paid for the first visit to the clinic myself and then put in a claim for around £1,500 via our pet insurer, Waggel. The claim was accepted and the money paid out.

Unfortunately, the last four digits of the account number the insurer sent the money to is not mine. I’ve tried to contact Waggel to get more details on who this money has gone to but I haven’t got anywhere. It says the payment has not bounced back but has offered me no more assistance to get this money back.

The numbers are very different from those of my account or my partner’s, so I feel it really can’t be my mistake. What can I do?

In this situation there is nothing you can do to retrieve the money, as you are not a customer of the sending or receiving bank, and neither will deal with you. Any instruction to retrieve the money via the banks involved has to come from Waggel or the unintended recipient.

I saw no reason why you should be left out of pocket because Waggel had mistakenly sent your payout to the wrong account, so I asked the insurer to pay you immediately and retrieve the misdirected payment in its own good time.

Ten minutes later, it emailed you to say it had asked the “practice” to return the money and was waiting for a response. The reference to “practice” obviously implied that a vet had received your money, but we still weren’t sure which one because your dog had been referred to specialists by your first attending vet.

After nine days and several very polite but frustrating conversations with Waggel staff, the insurer told me that the money had been sent to the small animal hospital at the Royal Dick, Edinburgh’s veterinary school. I asked the Royal Dick to locate the payment and the next day it told me it had found the money and was returning it to Waggel. Full marks to the Royal Dick.

You were disappointed that the veterinary hospital hadn’t automatically realised that it had been paid twice and returned the money. But I have just spent six months working on the other side of the fence – processing membership applications and payments for a brilliant charity, the Hawk and Owl Trust, and have learned the hard way that payments can slip in without being noticed straight away and that mistakes are easy to make. The important thing is to correct them as soon as they are pointed out, and Waggel didn’t do that. At least your £1,498 is on its way to you now. I hope Zena feels much better very soon.

We notified Virgin Media on 21 January that we were switching our broadband and landline, with its existing number, to Sky. The switch happened on 22 February. We then had issues with Virgin not disconnecting our landline and we actually had our landline working through both providers.

Virgin insisted it was a Sky issue, while Sky said it was Virgin, but eventually the problem was sorted. However, we have continued to receive bills from Virgin, despite making many calls and being assured on 3 March, during a 55-minute call, that all was resolved and we were due a refund of £63.78 – but only after a 40-day wait.

Forty days later, I rang Virgin as no refund appeared and it said I owed £8.73 (an early disconnection charge, despite being out of contract), then I will receive an undisclosed sum after a further 40 days. Could you please help to finally resolve this problem as Virgin seems to be in disarray.

You wrote to me on Monday, and on Tuesday I contacted Virgin suggesting that it was unreasonable to make you wait another 40 days and surely the £8.73 could be deducted from the money Virgin owed you.

On Wednesday, it called you to say that it is sending you a cheque for £63.78. It has waived the £8.73 charge, which it says was the outstanding amount left on your account following your move to Sky, not an early termination fee.

Email your problems to Jill Insley at your.problems@observer.co.uk