We have used online banking to pay our bills for more than 5 years without any issues.Basically, we set up a list of payees. Whenever we need to pay them, we will schedule the online banking to mail them a certified check with the specific amount and due day.
However, when paying a $700 bill last month, we accidently selected a wrong payee, whom we have not done any business for more than 2 years. Worse than that, we did not notice the mistake till the right payee called us for money. As a result, the check had been delivered and cashed.
We tried to contact the wrong payee (who has a small family business) through phone calls, text messages and emails, and offer to give him $100 for the trouble we caused to him. But it seemed that they chose to ignore us and just want to keep the $700. The bank also said they could not do anything about it. While I will try to send the payee a certified mail with evidence (provided by bank) that they cashed the check, I am pretty sure that he will keep on ignoring us.
My question is: Is there any legal justfication for us to ask them to send the money back to us? If so, how should we proceed?
