Banking error gives customer a $4051 surprise

When Vikas Joneja wrote out a cheque of $450 for his gardener, he didn't expect it would break the bank.

But the Auckland man found himself out of

cash and in overdraft after $4501 was taken from his Westpac account and deposited into the gardener's ASB account.

Mr Joneja said he wrote the cheque for $450 with a dash at the end to show there were no cents and also wrote "four hundred and fifty" in words underneath.

He discovered the mistake when he went to an ATM to withdraw money. At first he couldn't understand what had happened.

"I got a shock, I was thinking 'hang on, money should have come in, so when I looked at the online account I saw the discrepancy."

He called Westpac's call centre which confirmed what had happened but told him to call back later in the morning. After waiting for a couple of hours he rang the call centre again.

"They had to write to ASB to get the money back. Instead of debiting $450 they debited $4501 which is more than 10 times."

When he asked the bank what happened they said they took $4501 because they mistook the dash at the end as a 1.