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A NUMBER OF AIB customers have been left short of funds after their mortgage interest relief wasn’t paid.
The error affected customers entitled to the relief who pay their mortgage on the last day of the month. Figures for the number of mortgage-holders affected weren’t immediately available from the bank.
The tax relief is paid automatically by the Revenue service to lenders – and the saving is then passed on to the customer.
However, problems in the process at the end of February meant the relief wasn’t applied for some customers – and a greater monthly amount was taken by the bank, via direct debit.
Mortgage tax relief can be worth hundreds of euro to some customers.
“The methodology for payment of tax relief at source (TRS) is fully agreed between the Revenue Commissioners and AIB and applied in accordance with these agreements,” AIB said in a statement.
“It is dependent on the bank receiving the mortgage payment within the previous calendar month.
Unfortunately, payments normally due on Saturday 28 February, could not be deducted until the next working day which happened to fall in March.
“This has resulted in the tax relief not being paid at source in March.”
The bank said customers wouldn’t lose out in the long term, and that full tax relief would be granted.
“We understand that this may have temporarily inconvenienced some customers and in such circumstances, we advise they contact their local AIB branch who will support them.”
Why are AIB saying that it will give the money back ‘gradually over the year’, is this money not tax relief between Revenue and the mortgage / home owners and is facilitated by a ‘middleman’ AIB? Therefore AIB should make good on these peoples accounts. If you went overdrawn on the Saturday or Sunday, you can be damn sure the bank would charge interest from that time even if it’s Saturday ,Sunday or any other day. Where’s the regulator?
Exactly this is not the banks money it should be credited to their customers accounts as soon as possible with interest!
Banks charge fees on what they want …when they want!! between 25cent ATM charge per transaction for withdrawing cash, 25cent fee on Cash Deposits, Quarterly Fees, Online transfer fee, Direct debit fees, Government Stamp Duty on Plastic Credit/Debit cards. the fees goes on! Customers should be allowed charge banks late payment fee’s for problems like this – just as they would do with customers who are late with any payments owed to the bank!!
Keith
I am guessing because the tax relief is claimed over a 12 month period and accrued on a monthly basis. The level will be increased each months as per revenue guidelines. So from now on mortgage holders will receive a higher amount month until the end of the tax year. This is not AIB trying to pull a fast one it is how these things work. That said is it a disgrace that AIB get something like this wrong in the first place. A little gesture of good will should have been given !
€50 quartely fees this time round.. its a joke.. Any one bank with KBC .. let me know if their ok. Seriously want to switch from AIB
We should have got our relief at the end of Feb which was never paid. AIB maintained for 3 weeks and even wrote to us saying it was paid, had me calling revenue and my current acc bank before eventually accepting there was a problem on their side. Then only paid 25% of the relief due on the March payment. At the moment we’re down over €300 with no sign of a resolution in place and a month of terrible customer service from AIB. Their a Shambles and I’ve gone down the official complaint route which compels them to reply within a certain timeframe.
Sarah, if you mean you are going down the route of complaining to the Financial Ombudsman about this please take my advice and don’t waste your valium in this process. Another useless quango of paper pushers.
How is it possible that every single “system error” takes money from customers, and therefore earns money for the banks in interest? Has there ever been a system error in favour of customers?
You mean like this one?
http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/free-cash-atm-dont-bank-4842100
Barbara
This didn’t earn any money for AIB whatsoever, even in tiny interest payments. The beneficiary of this is the revenue.
This arrogance on the part of astute owned bank is totally unacceptable. And not a word from those we elected to regulate these septic parasitic banks !
It’s time for change folks. The system needs to be shook to its core because we the people are being treated as idiots by government, banks, Irish Water ….. and the rest… tv license, usc, carbon tax, motor tax, bin tax, income tax, prsi, bank charges, health insurance tax, nct tax, road tax, vat, excise on drink, petrol, drivers license tax, irish water, private home tax, second home tax, etc —- just hand over your pay packet to the parasites in the bank/Fine Gael/ Labour/ Irish Water !!!
We need massive change getting rid of Fine Gael and their patsies in Labour as well as those sharing the trough Fianna Fáil and WE NEED CHANGE SOON !!!
….. of a state owned bank …..
You are going to have to explain the arrogance bit. It’s a system failure, they happen, to all institutions relying on IT infrastructure. They apologised, offered assistance to those adversely affected .
It a long weekend. Go have a cider and relax. Life’s too short.
Good man Bill. You’re right. You shouldn’t have to pay for anything. Vote SF/AAA/PBP and they’ll see you right.
@Padriag O’Traged
Seems you have enjoyed your cider already.
The arrogance is the bank not refunding customers immediately and casually saying that customers will be repaid during the year.
IT failures are not acceptable if they cost the customer money – thats why most business build redundancy and fail over into their configurations.
Enjoy your cider.
@Alan O’connor
Yea we’re really rolling in the clover thanks to the self serving snouts in the trough iLabour, Fianna Fail, and Fine Gael.
Keep voting for the same useless outfits thinking you will get a different result … deinition of …. eh ..
Unless of course you happen to be one of Fine Gael / Labours rich friends.
Yea maybe thats it …..
Ah Billy.. If you had an inkling of how these things worked you’d be slower on the draw.
When you have your refreshing apple based beverage, spare a thought for the lads & lasses probably working through the holidays to fix this.
As much as you dislike the government they don’t run the systems in AIB
Bill
Same old tripe!
I’m going to report AIB to the Guards for theft and I’m also going to charge interest on the money they have taken
The banks
Still trying to claim what they can get their grubby maulers on.
Are people whinging about getting free money again
No.
It’s about people being left without money to surrive on you idiot. Probably something you don’t know anything about
Idiot……..
citizen smith you sound like citizen bitch
Ulster bank have made a mess of trs on my mortgage a few times and every time I get a letter telling me what the mistake was and what they were doing to fix it. You can be damn sure that whenever they left me out of pocket they corrected it in the following month by reducing how much was taken for the mortgage payment. They’ve also screwed up the other way by giving me too much trs credit and in that case they spread the increase owed over a period without charging additional interest. It sounds like AIB should talk to ulster bank about remedy approaches.
I work for Revenue (Clerical Officer – not in the direct taxes areas). There’s a very simple solution to this. Get someone in AIB and someone in TRS (Tax Relief at Source) Section in Revenue on the phone together and sort it out at the earliest time possible. There is no excuse. I bank with EBS and I know from experience that transactions do not go through my account on weekends, or on national holidays. Therefore I plan ahead when I know that the month will contain national holidays or scheduled transaction dates falling on weekends. I’m just one person. There are sections in both AIB and Revenue with employees who presumably can match my basic grasp of calenders and bank accounts. The fact that no one saw this coming (28th February 2015 = Saturday), if I’m to believe the report on RTE and that is wasn’t sorted out within 24 hours is ASTONISHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I’ll expand on my first comment. I pay a mortgage. The last date on which I can make each month’s mortgage repayment is the final weekday of the month. I can either have the repayment moved (online) to my mortgage account 24 hours before the last weekday of the month, or I can call into an EBS branch and ask them to transfer the money to that account before close of business on that last weekday. If I don’t have the money to make the full repayment on that final weekday, it’s my fault. I know this at the start of each month, because it’s my responsibility to know when and how I must make that month’s repayment. I EXPECT A BANK TO BE ABLE TO MATCH BOTH MY ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY, MY ANTICIPATION LEVEL AND THE BASIC FACT THAT IF MY MORTGAGE WASN’T PAID THAT MONTH IT WAS NO ONE’S FAULT BUT MY OWN. E-mail your TD’s and tell them that this kind of total screw-up and abject lack of sorting out a mess in no way created by the mortgage holders is NO LONGER TOLERABLE.
It was very sneaky of A.I.B. to put out a statement blaming their agreement with Revenue for this mess (as if they themselves were not part of the “agreement”) on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend when they knew there would be no response from revenue, dept. of finance, minister for finance etc.etc.
David that’s an incredibly pretentious comment. Not everyone works in revenue and and not everyone have such wonderful foresight to see the issue happening. Your also asking people to fix the banks misstake by calling two of the hardest people to get through to on the phone…..I’m sure your colleagues in revenue are squirming reading this as you make them out to be pretentious and self gratifying. You sound like one if those people who get satisfaction from taking issuing a letter to a hard up couple to inform them they underpaid their property tax or issuing an estimate for VRT on a vehicle that tax was already paid in the EU.
What kind of mortgage do people have that they get back 300? I only get back 75 euro
A house in Dublin at the height of the boom and still within the first few years of the mortgage could very easily have that size of trs. Of course I tend to think the price of houses in or around Dublin are totally outrageous compared to the rest of the country. Until job creation ramps up in other parts of the country the demand for property in Dublin will continue.
Brian about 260 -300 will have interest relief at 300 euro.im open to correction. So its not a massive mortgage for two people but 300 is a massive amount if it paid tour bills etc
Chees Klark, I knew that they were miss calcukating. Must give them a call
Always the customer that suffers.
Mental that a yearly cap of 500k brings in frank Spencer’s to run the banks .
A bank screwing up? Well who would have thought that….
I had an issue with AIB about 18months ago. I went through my online banking with fine tooth comb and was , frankly, astonished to see the amount of money/ transactions that were happening in my account without my knowledge. I went into the bank and asked what was happening. The answer I got was ‘That’s the way the system worked’. Went straight to TSB and opened an account and transferred my wages to there.
Modern technology eh
Move to ptsb problems sorted
PTSB have the highest interest rates are did you not know that?
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