With Chaps like these around …

With Chaps like these around …

On the Wednesday, I received a letter from Barclays saying it had reversed the transaction due to a discrepancy, and that the money was being returned to the paying bank. It seems the employer wrote my ex's name on the transaction. Barclays picked up that it was not in my name after the money had gone into my account. Because the payment had been reversed, the employer then paid it to my ex's new bank account because he had resigned from the job and they needed to close their records. My ex has now disappeared with my money. SL, Colchester

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Yours is a mirror image of other complaints I receive where the sender writes an incorrect account number for the recipient, and the money ends up in a stranger's bank account. In those cases, banks say they cannot simply retrieve the payment, and there is nothing they can do except ask the wrong recipient to return it. Your transfer included the correct account number but, because the name didn't match, Barclays withdrew money that was rightly yours.

You were very unlucky. The bank says it cannot monitor Bacs electronic payments because there are so many millions. But it is easier to check individual Chaps payments like yours, which are more expensive and faster, but fewer.

If the employer had confirmed to the bank that the payment was correct, Barclays would have recredited your account. He didn't, although neither did he say it wasn't. He won't now, of course, because he has paid your ex-partner through the new bank account.

Barclays refuses to refund you, saying the cashier's information was correct when you asked. It is catastrophic for you that it was incorrect the following Monday. You can go to court to ask that Barclays serves a notice of disclosure on the employer to reveal your ex's new bank account. If you could then get the court to order the new bank to reveal his address, you could sue him. But he is unlikely to have the money to pay you back, even if he still has that bank account and still lives at that address.

• Email Margaret Dibben at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Margaret Dibben, Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU and include a telephone number. Do not enclose SAEs or original documents. Letters are selected for publication and we cannot give personal replies. The newspaper accepts no legal responsibility for advice.