The £26,000 banking error

What makes her story so extraordinary, though, is that she made the mistake in May 2010. Every month since – for more than two years – her pay was going into someone else's Nationwide account. And now, to her horror, Sally is discovering she has almost no chance of getting back a penny of the £26,650 transferred in error.

Sally is not rich. They live in a modest semi, her husband works in the public sector, and they have a joint income of less than £50,000. "We live a simple life; we are quite frugal. We even went overdrawn on that account for a while and cut back as a result."