Some Scottish Widows policy-holders have been asked to hand back windfall payments made by mistake.
The pensions and insurance provider admits it wrongly paid out to some 200 customers.
It gave them windfall payments on policies which did not belong to them and has blamed out-of-date data.
Many customers have spent their windfall cash because they believed it was rightfully theirs, an investigation by BBC Radio has discovered.
Martin Brennan, from the West Midlands, told the BBC he was awarded almost £3,000 (sterling) last September and had spent the money by the time the company asked for it back.
Scottish Widows says it has apologised to customers but was entitled to ask for the money back.
The windfall payments were triggered when the business was taken over by Lloyds TSB last year.
More than 1.5 million payments were made, but Scottish Widows says a small number of errors were among the payments.
A spokeswoman says the company carried out rigorous and externally audited testing of the quality of its data but some of it was old.
She says she can not discuss individual cases or reveal the value of the wrongly made pay-outs.
PA