We all make mistakes

This screenshot shows an erroneous transaction from my banking app — one I personally experienced.

The incident taught me several lessons, but most importantly: check your statements regularly. Had I not caught this withdrawal, it likely would have become permanent. For accounts with significant activity, weekly reviews are essential. These checks needn’t be time-consuming — just a few minutes, perhaps during an ad break, to verify your recent transactions.

When I reported the error, the bank responded within 24 hours and confirmed their mistake. However, getting them to explicitly admit “We made a mistake” proved surprisingly challenging.

Mistakes can happen even with advanced technology and controls in place, despite everyone’s best intentions. Yet it raised a troubling question: what if our roles had been reversed? Had I made the error instead of the bank, I would likely have faced multiple charges — “processing fees,” “adjustment fees,” “error fees” — all automatically applied to my account.

This disparity — where institutional mistakes often come without penalties while customer errors trigger immediate fees — reveals a fundamental imbalance in banking relationships. One can’t help but wonder whether regulatory bodies truly consider this power dynamic when overseeing financial institutions and their relationships with customers.