A 39-YEAR-OLD woman has received someone else’s bank details in the post, in the form of a cheque.

Only last week the News Shopper reported on a similar incident where a teenager had received the bank details of another student’s in the post.

Julie Pearson of Glendale, Swanley received a letter from her bank Alliance and Leicester last Thursday (OCTOBER 30).

Inside the envelope was a letter addressed to her, and also a cheque to the value of £10 which Mrs Pearson knew nothing about.

Attached to the cheque was a cover letter from the charity, Charities Aid Foundation, explaining that the cheque could not be processed because it required the address of the person who had sent it.

The cheque was therefore being returned to the bank so that it could be sent back to the customer.

But instead of it being returned to the correct customer, it had been sent in a correspondence to Mrs Pearson.

Mrs Pearson said: “There has obviously been some kind of mix up.

“Someone has accidentally picked up the cheque and put it in an envelope addressed to me.

“It may seem like a minor error but it is an unacceptable one.”

She says that she is shocked that this kind of mistake has been allowed to happen.

She said: “I would not want my bank details to be in the hands of someone else.

“On this cheque is the person’s account number, sort code and signature.

“I’m sure that in the wrong hands someone could do a lot with this.”

Mrs Pearson who is a part time playgroup assistant and mother of three, contacted the Alliance and Leicester customer helpline as she was unsure about what to do with the cheque.

She said: “The customer adviser on the phone apologised and told me that there had obviously been some kind of mix up.

“They told me to destroy the cheque immediately.”

Mrs Pearson says that she is now going to write a letter of complaint to the bank’s head office, and she wants a letter of apology in return and the reassurance that it won’t happen again.

Mrs Pearson says that she does not have an Alliance and Leicester branch in Swanley, instead she uses internet and telephone banking.

She says that the letter was sent from an office in Bootle in Merseyside.

She said: “I have been banking with Alliance and Leicester for several years and nothing like this has happened before.

“But in the current climate I feel it is unacceptable for this kind of silly mistake to happen.

“It looks like someone has sent the cheque to the charity to make a donation.

“But I’ve been told to destroy the cheque so how will they know that their cheque was never cashed?”

News Shopper is awaiting a response from Alliance and Leicester.