Keeping the peace

Finance | 10 Apr 2008

Greenpeace has said that donors have been ‘amazingly understanding’ over a computer glitch that left many of them hundreds of pounds out of pocket over the Christmas and New Year period. A software problem led to direct-debit payments made on December 28 being altered by two decimal points, meaning that someone giving £10 a month to Greenpeace had £1,000 deducted from their bank account.

Executive director Stephen Tindale said the organisation had no idea why this had happened and was still investigating the incident. More than 17,000 donors were affected and software experts have been brought in to get to the root of the problem, the first of its kind.

Tindale said Greenpeace had been inundated with phone calls. As soon as the charity became aware of the problem, it sent letters to all supporters, gave out a freephone number, emailed those it had addresses for and put solutions on its website. As the banks were unable to refund the money to donors’ accounts until January 3, some have had to pay bank charges. Greenpeace will refund these charges, which will amount to about £200,000, despite having no insurance.

Tindale said most donors have reacted positively to this arrangement, with only a few having withdrawn their support. A few have told Greenpeace they can bear the cost of the bank charges themselves.

The organisation has now introduced manual checks to ensure such a problem cannot recur. ‘We are checking and checking again for future direct debits and we will probably put in place permanent manual checks,’ said Tindale. He added that this would probably mean recruiting staff to carry out spot checks on all direct debit runs.

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