Banking incompetence



  • ...this is more of a question, because i know/assume there are some people here that could know the answer, so:

    i was paid an invoice, yesterday or the day before yesterday, and I'm currently in the situation that i really need the money to come to my bank account asap, so it made me once again think about one thing i don't understand at all...

    our age is called an "information age", and it's boasted to be the time where access to any information worldwide is instanteous. facebook, for example, updates in real-time, worldwide, with millions of users adding content nonstop. youtube videos with size of several hundreds of megabytes being accessible to anybody in about 10 minutes after being uploaded. gps systems using satelites on earth's orbit, hundreds of kilometers away from surface, relaying position to milions of devices, with accuracy up to +/- 1 meter, nonstop. we are able to pay instantly from credit card through internet to anybody in the world.

    and then there's internet banking, and money transfer from account to account... and i don't know about your country, but here where i live, it is said to take "up to 3 workdays" for the money to actually appear in the target account. and i can't fucking comprehend, come up, think of, or invent SINGLE FUCKING REASON, why it should really take so long.

    okay, i got one, the transfers being made in "cron'd" batches, which are scheduled once a day or so.

    but why the fuck...? what's so impossible, or hard, or impractical, or undesirable about one bank directly contacting other bank via some internet service right at the time the transaction/money transfer is made? or at least having the batch jobs run every hour, which would speed up the whole process to take maybe 4 hours at worst? why it has to really take 1 to 3 days? i don't get it. does it really have some reason, point or purpose, or is it just that banks do not care because they don't have to, because people are used to it and don't even think about questioning it? i am not just bitching, i'm really genuinely interested to know the answer. does anyone of you know and would be so kind to tell me? how come that the main driving force of worldwide economy takes longer to move than some stupid irrelevant meaningless facebook statuses? and how come everybody is okay with it?



  • That's an easy one. There is only one reason why banks do this: they don't have to pay interest while the money is floating between two accounts.

    I'm with two banks: one internet-only bank for my savings account, and a major traditional bank for credit/debit cards and other daily banking (whose code has been on the TDWTF main site, by the way). In my country, there is a WTFy rule where you can't just transfer money from a savings account to a checking account. IIRC, you can only do that if you can prove the destination account is owned by you, but in practice what happens is that you can only transfer to your checking account if it's with the same bank. So I (and everyone else) have a "fake" checking account with my savings bank just to transfer money away from there. That doesn't make any sense, since there is absolutely no difference at all, except annoying people because transfering money is now a two-step process, but apparently, automating that process would be illegal.

    Now, when I transfer money between two accounts (both mine) via the web banking tool from the major bank, it takes up to two days to complete the transfer. When I do the same thing on the internet-only bank, it happens instantly. Literally. I fill in the details of the transfer, click Send, get redirected to my accounts summary, and the money shows up on the new account. Also, when I transfer money from the internet bank to the major bank, it arrives in a matter of (office) hours. Faster than an internal transfer in the major bank. The other direction takes days.

    Edit: I found the article about my bank



  • @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    but why the fuck...?

    Some guesses:

    Banks make money from interest. The longer they hold money, the more interest they make. The goal is to maximize the amount of money in your account at all times-- which means procrastinating as long as feasible before transferring it away.

    Banks don't compete on "money transfer time to other banks", and couldn't really even if they wanted to, since it requires the cooperation of other banks.

    Banks don't hire competent IT workers, and are generally running shitty IBM, Oracle or Siemens products that haven't been updated in 20 years. The whole infrastructure is old and creaking which, again, prevents banks from competing on "money transfer time" even if they could.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I assume it's infrastructure, since they can't/won't/shouldn't use the public internet for communications (though why VPN's are so hard for them I don't know.)



    Back in 1998 the UK banks started Faster Payments Service whereby transactions initiated from an account results in funds being immediately accessible in the destination account within minutes.



    The system wasn't active until 2007, but it only became 'normal' for banks to offer this around 2010, though individual banks still restricted it (either by number of transactions permitted per day, or a limit on the amount (per transaction in in aggregate) per day that could be transferred.) For example one building society restricted it to £10 per day - not at all useful. (The restrictions were 'to protect customers,' not because of anything inherent in the system)



    It's a bit better these days - I can transfer sensible amounts of money and it'll appear in the destination account more or less immediately.



    Cheques still take on the order of days to clear however. As do payments for things such as credit cards (the money leaves your account immediately, gets to the CC company immediately, then the CC company takes days to credit that amount to your account.)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @briverymouse said:

    here is only one reason why banks do this: they don't have to pay interest while the money is floating between two accounts.
    I'd be interested in see some citation/guestimates about how much they're not paying under those circumstances. My gut feeling is it's not a lot.



  • In the US, bank-to-bank transfers are done via ACH. They are batch processed, usually once at the end of day. The Federal Reserve runs the largest ACH network, so it's likely your transfer is going through Fed ACH. They have to run through several steps to clear the transfer before they reconcile all of the banks. Then your destination bank finally ends up with the transfer. Then there is usually a hold period, for security reasons. However, the account will earn interest during the hold period. Even without the hold period, it ususally takes at least 2 days for the process to finish, although some banks fall in the 3 or 4 day range.

    Is the ACH transfer process screwy in the modern age? Sort of, but there's not really much incentive for the ACH networks (specifically, the Federal Reserve which handles most ACH transfers) to improve the speed.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Banks make money from interest. The longer they hold money, the more interest they make. The goal is to maximize the amount of money in your account at all times-- which means procrastinating as long as feasible before transferring it away.

    Actually it's not keeping it in your account but floating it for the three days so that the bank can pocket the interest from it (plus it allows for some chance to clear up any hickups caused by the super shitty X9 electronic depositing spec).



  • So I noticed everyone's talking about transfers between different banks. Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?



  • @briverymouse said:

    So I noticed everyone's talking about transfers between different banks. Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?

    What the shit? I've never seen that. That sucks. Your bank sucks. Stop using a suck bank.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @briverymouse said:

    Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?
    Probably. It wouldn't be Santander would it? Their name is mud in the UK, due to the fuckups they create, and the (lack of) customer service when the customers notice the fuck ups.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Stop using a suck bank.

    Hmm...That actually sounds interesting.



  • Here in the UK, an organisation called BACS deals with all inter-bank transfers. Like most people I get paid "via BACS" which means that two days before payday, the payroll guys send BACS a file with everyone's wages and bank info.



    It has to be done two days in advance as BACS has deadlines for this sort of thing. Anyway, even though I don't see the money until my actual payday, my bank knows about it the day before I get paid, but my company doesn't let me have my payslip until the right day, so my bank knows how much money I'm getting before I do!!! I've got in the habit of calling them up and asking how much I'll be getting...



    And as BACS is a middleman for ALL transfers, guess how much hassle it causes when their systems die right on the day they need the payroll files (and it's happened several times that I know of!)



  • @MeesterTurner said:

    Anyway, even though I don't see the money until my actual payday, my bank knows about it the day before I get paid, but my company doesn't let me have my payslip until the right day, so my bank knows how much money I'm getting before I do!!! I've got in the habit of calling them up and asking how much I'll be getting...

    Seems odd.. I always get paid the same amount each month.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    ...They have to run through several steps to clear the transfer before they reconcile all of the banks. Then your destination bank finally ends up with the transfer. Then there is usually a hold period, for security reasons. However, the account will earn interest during the hold period. Even without the hold period, it ususally takes at least 2 days for the process to finish, although some banks fall in the 3 or 4 day range.

    That's the story. However, no validation actually happens to provide any security (at least the hold isn't tied to the validation). One entire variant of the 419 scam depends on the validation not coinciding with funds availability. The scammer sends a forged check to the victim. The victim is happy when the check clears and they see the money in their account (and is ignorant of the fact that a check clearing is nearly meaningless), then they send the 90% off to the destination they promised to send the money to and spend the remaining 10%. Inevitably, the check is discovered as fake and the poor victim owes the bank a ton of money. If the funds were actually being held until they were verified, this would never happen and the entire M.O. of these scammers would be invalid.

    The simple truth is that the law requires that the funds transfer be completed in x number of days, so it completes seconds before x number of days passes. There is little pressure from consumers to fix the problem and little competition offering better service. It's called float and is a major source of investable money (and therefore profit) for banks. They don't make any money on the interest, they simply invest it. Float used to be the primary reason for a bank to have deposit accounts, but nowadays their profit center has shifted to fees.



  • @briverymouse said:

    So I noticed everyone's talking about transfers between different banks. Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?

    Probably. Even Bank of America, the shittiest bank in the US, can manage same-account transfers in less than an hour.



  • @locallunatic said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Banks make money from interest. The longer they hold money, the more interest they make. The goal is to maximize the amount of money in your account at all times-- which means procrastinating as long as feasible before transferring it away.

    Actually it's not keeping it in your account but floating it for the three days so that the bank can pocket the interest from it (plus it allows for some chance to clear up any hickups caused by the super shitty X9 electronic depositing spec).

    Thank you, Mr. Pedantic Dickweed. What would this forum be without pedantic dickweeds like you?

    Oh yeah. Tolerable.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PJH said:

    @briverymouse said:
    here is only one reason why banks do this: they don't have to pay interest while the money is floating between two accounts.
    I'd be interested in see some citation/guestimates about how much they're not paying under those circumstances. My gut feeling is it's not a lot.

    You'd be surprised. Insurance companies, payroll companies, etc., all do it too. Interest on float can be pretty big when you're holding the money for a few hundred thousand people, even if it's just for a few days.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Probably. Even Bank of America, the shittiest bank in the US, can manage same-account transfers in less than an hour.
     

    Every financial institution I've ever used has had instant transfers within the same bank, not just account, so does that mean even that small a delay makes the average US bank worse than the average AU bank? When I say instant I mean it: I had my own account and my joint account logged in at the same time (different browsers), initiated a transfer, swapped windows, hit refresh and it was there. Less than 2 seconds is as close to instant as one can get.

    The bigger banks generally had bigger delays when tranferring between banks (in and out) - the bank I use was a "building society" until recently and I generally get my pay before anyone else in the office (no-one shares the same bank as the company). Now that they are a "bank" they can offer better rates on credit and other things. They've always had unlimited (subject to user-set daily limits) electronic payments and transfers.

    My "BS" is friendly: once someone transferred me money but made a typo on my account number. Since the depositor entered my name the bank was able to track me down and deposit the money into my account anyway, and sent me a (dead-tree) letter with instructions to tell the depositor. All without a fee or anything. I've left three other banks because they charged too many fees!




  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @briverymouse said:

    So I noticed everyone's talking about transfers between different banks. Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?

    What the shit? I've never seen that. That sucks. Your bank sucks. Stop using a suck bank.

     

    Every bank is suck bank.

    Try this: I take a wad of cash into a branch of my bank and say "deposit this in my checking account".  I want this to happen as quickly as possible because there's an e-check about to hit that's going to draw down my balance into overdraft territory.  Let's say the wad of cash is a thousand bucks and the e-check is for five hundred more than I had in the account before I walked into the branch.  Should work with room to spare.

    Instead, the e-check hits the following day, and there's insufficient funds in the account to cover it, so I get dinged.  Turns out when you make a deposit over a hundred dollars, only the first hundred gets credited to the account the first day.  The rest takes "three to five business days".

    Because they have to wait for the deposit to "clear".

    Even when it's cash.

    I swear, if this keeps up, I'm going to start doing all my transaction in chickens and goats.

     



  • One reason is security.

    This is the procedure for new payees with my Australian bank.

     When a payment is made to a new payee, the amount is deducted immediately, but held in limbo for, I think, 24 hours, or maybe longer: I haven't checked recently. A message is sent to my email address informing me of the transfer. This all allows me to act before the payment actually goes through, which decreases the bank's liability too.

    Even if, for some reason, I don't get the email, I am still likely to check my balance some time and pick it up.

     Once all this has happened, all further transfers to that payee happen as fast as the banking system allows. As another poster has stated, that can be seconds. Rarely more than a few hours, maybe a day depending on the receiving bank's systems. 


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @da Doctah said:

    Turns out when you make a deposit over a hundred dollars [cash], only the first hundred gets credited to the account the first day.  The rest takes "three to five business days".
    Would "money laundering regulations" be the excuse for at least a part of this particular piece of bureaucracy?



  • As another Australian forumite, I'm boggled by the idea of having lengthy holds on payments. (And the poster whose bank refuses to clear cash payments immediately.)

    My employer sends their payroll to their bank on a Thursday afternoon. Their bank is not the same as either of my banks. The money is in my account (and automatically cleared) before I get home on Thursday night. I make payments from my savings account to my home loan (at a different bank) and they are processed on the same day - I've never actually checked to see how soon after I do the transfer it shows up on the other end, but I don't think I've ever seen the date on the home loan transaction record differ to the date on the transfer. If I transfer between my accounts with the same bank (e.g. to make credit card payments from my saving account) the transfer is processed as the page refreshes. I sometimes make payments to various accounts with other banks (e.g. if buying something on eBay, or to send money to family members) and as far as I know there's never a significant delay with that.

    The only things that ever get a noticeable hold are personal cheques, where it's understandable (bank cheques are always deposited as cleared funds). But we only use those once or twice a year at most, and I don't think we've [i]received[/i] one for years. Oh, and credit cards occasionally have the available balance reduced by the transaction amount some days before the transaction is actually processed and the current balance is updated, though that's really a separate issue. Everything else is basically immediate.



  •  I use HSBC over here, and their banking is just full of WTF's

    • Transferring to another account takes 3-5 working days, but payments going from the account goes out immediately (although if it's made on a weekend it shows on statements for the next working day, so there's lots of times when my online statements don't match my actual balance - it knows what I've paid out, so why can't it show it on my "instant" online banking?!)
    • Every time I used to visit their site I was hit with a popup about some anti-virus they were endorsing. Said antivirus was Windows-only and I wasn't using Windows (they couldn't even attempt a rudimentary OS detection?) They changed the behaviour to happen only the first 3 timesby setting a cookie, not relying on server-based data of when I was logging in. Because of that, if I logged in via a different machine I'd have the popups all over again
    • If I started trying to log in before the page had fully loaded (which sometimes took a while on my old shitty TalkTalk connection, but that's another WTF)when the page finished loading it would wipe the login form clear. If I'd typed in anything, tough luck to me! Apparently this was a security measure
    • When I emailed them about this "security measure" I was told I needed to fill in various details in my next reply email because they couldn't deal with my request until it was linked to my account (WTF?) and those details included my account number, sent in plain text via email. Nice one HSBC.
    • Attempting to change my address details on the site always logged me out on Firefox until they re-designed their site. Not sure what this was about, but it forced me to actually go into a store and change my details. This Internet banking thing, it's more convenient no?
    • Whenever I made payments online and I was directed to the "Verified by Visa" page to enter a password my browser always remembered the password because the idiots who put the form together didn't bother to add the flag to the input that told it to never remember. I'm not sure if this was Visa or HSBC (the page was emblazoned with the HSBC logo, so I'm thinking it was them) but this is really basic stuff, those flags exist to protect me in-case my machine were ever compromised.




  • Reading this thread makes me appreciate my credit union even more. Instant transfers between my accounts, cash deposits at the credit union office are fully available immediately, no monthly fees for anything, and I can even transfer between my account and another credit union member's account and have it take effect right away.



    Also, the ATMs that 7-Eleven uses are on the same network that the various credit unions are on (at least here in California). With 7-Eleven having stores almost everywhere in Southern California, it's easy to find a 24-hour no-fee ATM when I need one.

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ASheridan said:

    Whenever I made payments online and I was directed to the "Verified by Visa" page to enter a password my browser always remembered the password because the idiots who put the form together didn't bother to add the flag to the input that told it to never remember. I'm not sure if this was Visa or HSBC (the page was emblazoned with the HSBC logo, so I'm thinking it was them) but this is really basic stuff, those flags exist to protect me in-case my machine were ever compromised.
    That one's Visa, not HSBC. (HSBC call through to Visa to provide the page, and provide the logos etc that Visa should use on that page.)



    And on the subject of WTF's of Verified by Visa (or Mastercard's equivalent - they've fucked this up too) wrt credit cards

    • if you have a second card holder on the account, and
    • a 3rd party site insists on presenting the Verified by Visa or SecureCode page, for payment and
    • the first cardholder has set a password on their card,

    guess what needs to happen when the second card holder gets presented with the VbV/MC screen?

    Go on - I bet you can't guess...


  • The first post is actually the correct post: banks hold the money in their own pocket and use it for short-term loans to get interest on it. This way the banks earn money. In the Netherlands banks have been very open about this policy in the past. See http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valutering for the dutch wikipedia article explaining this. It also says the european payment directives from the EU put some limits on withholding money. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/payments/framework/psd_en.htm sets the limit to "end of next day". When you follow this rule it sets the exterme limit to 48 hours if you make your payment 1 minute after midnight and only 24 hours if you make the payment one minute before midnight.

    In the Netherlands I find that when I use my debit card, the payment is made within a few hours.

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    Because they have to wait for the deposit to "clear".

    Even when it's cash.

     

    Weird.

    I went to deposit 600 in cash one day, and put it in the teller machine, then went to get a haircut and I had it on my account when I got back home.

    My bank can beat up your bank, I guess.

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Seems odd.. I always get paid the same amount each month.

    My basic salary's always the same, but I do varying amounts of overtime every month (anything from a couple to about 20 hours). I can work out the total before tax very easily, but not the actual amount I get after the taxman's leeched a load of it, and the "calculate your wages" websites never do quite get it right...



  • Here in Thailand, a wire transfer from outside the country takes between one day and three weeks. From stories I've heard from other people, it depends on how much you scream and yell at the receiving branch.

    What I can NOT understand is that if I wire transfer from bank A to bank B it takes days to appear in the account, but if I go to the B branch, use A's ATM card to take the cash out, then walk in the door and deposit the cash, it takes less than an hour real time. Why is it that I can do it but the bank can't?

    Simple - the bank can, but won't. The bank is making money on the float. "They" are "ripping us off".

    Decades ago banks installed ATM machines because they're cheaper than human tellers. Recently the Thai banks have started charging for withdrawing money from ATM machines.

    Deposit all your money at the Bank of Me. No interest, no charges, no security, fast service.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @MeesterTurner said:

    and the "calculate your wages" websites never do quite get it right...
    Because they generally tend to assume a wage that is equally split amongst the months of the year. If you want accurate numbers, (and if you're so inclined) you could read up on how your company works it out, with the added advantage that you can tell them if they're doing it wrong and you're paying too much/little tax or NI. It'll also give you a finer appreciation of what that 747L is, that is (or should be) on your payslip and whether that 747L is actually right to begin with.



  • @dhromed said:

    I went to deposit 600 in cash one day, and put it in the teller machine, then went to get a haircut and I had it on my account when I got back home.
    I sometimes pay stuff for my older relatives on-line - they give me cash, I deposit it in the bank (my nearest branch is just across the road from where I work), and then pay whatever needs to be paid. The money is always there by the time I get to work, which is less than 10 minutes (and just today I deposited 1000€ this way).

    Transfers here are same day inside the country as long as they're done between 8 and 16 on business days (they used to be instant before we joined the eurozone, then we had to cripple our system due to some regulations, and from what I've heard due to German banks having had problems processing transfers quickly). Payments within EU seem to happen the next business day, and as far as I can see, the money stays in my account until then.



  • Another Australian here. I bank with Westpac here, and I have yet to find a bank that, when a transfer is initiated before 5pm or thereabouts, the funds don't appear in my bank account before 8pm the same business day... so far, I think I've gotten money from Rabodirect, NAB (urgh), Bendigo and Commonwealth and all have followed this rule.

    Transfers between two accounts in my name with the same bank are also instant however that's par for the course for Australia I think.

    The only thing that isn't instant is the description of the transaction appearing in Online Banking... usually they'll sit as EFTPOS TRANSACTION or DEBIT CARD AUTH for a couple of days before they realise, oh yes, it was done at Woolworths on X date: that said the funds are out straight away regardless of if I hit Cheque or Credit at the EFTPOS terminal. Transfers in, though, depends on what it is... my pay just shows up as PAY until next business day, and most other external transfers showed up as Transaction Details Available Next Business Day.



  • @dhromed said:

    @da Doctah said:

    Because they have to wait for the deposit to "clear".

    Even when it's cash.

     

    Weird.

    I went to deposit 600 in cash one day, and put it in the teller machine, then went to get a haircut and I had it on my account when I got back home.

    My bank can beat up your bank, I guess.

     

    I can make a cash deposit in my (Spanish) bank's ATM and it's immediately available. Plenty of other things suck, but this can be handy.



  •  I can understand delay "between banks" Even if it's only numbers and computer, the real value exist behind and money, at some point will need to be physically exchanged between bank. Even if "global balance" is nul by definition, some day bank A will own a million to bank B and vice versa the next day. But bank B can not show you more money on your account before it can be sure bank A will provide the money.

     

    Inside one bank, that's unacceptable. It only takes 10 minutes for a transfert from one of my accounts to another.



  • @tchize said:

     I can understand delay "between banks" Even if it's only numbers and computer, the real value exist behind and money, at some point will need to be physically exchanged between bank. Even if "global balance" is nul by definition, some day bank A will own a million to bank B and vice versa the next day. But bank B can not show you more money on your account before it can be sure bank A will provide the money.

     

    Inside one bank, that's unacceptable. It only takes 10 minutes for a transfert from one of my accounts to another.

    The time has nothing to do with technical limitations. Check verification, debit cards and ATMs are all proof that your bank balance can be verified and funds held instantly. The bank holds your money because they profit from doing so.



  • @Hatshepsut said:

    I can make a cash deposit in my (Spanish) bank's ATM and it's immediately available. Plenty of other things suck, but this can be handy.

    And again, even shitty Bank of America can do cash ATM deposits instantly, at least on the new envelope-less machines they just rolled-out everywhere. (I've often wondered at their faith in their OCR algorithms...)

    For check deposits, IIRC, they make 1/3rd the value available immediately and the rest has to wait for check clearing. And come to think of it, their OCR is pretty uncanny and figuring out how much a check is for, even when it's in my sloppy-ass handwriting, so I guess it's pretty good.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    even when it's in my sloppy ass-handwriting
     

    Dude, that's disgusting.



  • It is Coming

    Using Australia as the example. The majority of their systems have existed for a while and do batch processing for the majority of the transactions, most of the time running overnight. As the newer systems are coming into place (internet banking etc) it is starting to become instant. The issue being that many of the legacy systems simply were not built to do real time processing.

    In saying the above though some Australian banks are in planning to move into what they call their "Real Time" systems, involving major rewrites of critical software. Commonwealth bank for example is mid way through completing these tasks, with parts of the system completed in use, and are the first here to undertake it (see http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/real-time/ ). Their child bank, BankWest is currently planning to update their systems to complete this based on Commonwealth Banks success. 

    National Australia bank are also currently in the late design / early development phases of their "real time" project called "NextGen", as well as multiple other core upgrades. See http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/06/this-is-the-year-for-nab-core-banking-overhaul/ .

     

    So yes it is coming, but it takes a long time to update such large and critical systems (especially when they still technically work and cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade them) 



  • Upon reading everyone's posts my appreciation of my bank has gone way up.  No monthly fees and never had issues with funds not being available because they were floating somewhere.  Here is a totaly insane example of one thing that happened between me and my bank back when I was in college:

    One day I was going to the bank so my sister and mom both gave me things to deposit for them.  So I deposited three envelopes one for each of us.  Theirs went through but mine went MIA, and I was not aware of this, until a check I wrote over drafted against my savings and I got a nice note in the mail saying they charged me an over draft fee.  I went into the bank to figure out what the heck happened.  In the process of filling out the information on the 3 deposit envelopes an extra blank envelope got mixed in with my stack and I ended up depositing an empty envelope rather than mine (they actually had kept the blank envelope in their records for that day).  Despite it not being their fault the lady still refunded the over draft charge.  That is customer service.



  • @da Doctah said:

    I want this to happen as quickly as possible because there's an e-check about to hit that's going to draw down my balance into overdraft territory.

    WTF #1: You apparently can't budget properly.

    @da Doctah said:

    Instead, the e-check hits the following day, and there's insufficient funds in the account to cover it, so I get dinged.  Turns out when you make a deposit over a hundred dollars, only the first hundred gets credited to the account the first day.  The rest takes "three to five business days".

    Yes, putting a hold on deposits (even cash ones) is very common. I've known this since I was, like, 10 years old. It seems like a sensible way for the bank to protect themselves from fraudulent transactions. However, I've never been "dinged" for the situation you described; if the deposit clears, the money is retroactively available to cover any debits incurred.



  • @PJH said:

    @briverymouse said:
    Is my bank the only one where transfers to an account owned by the same person on the same bank take multiple days?
    Probably. It wouldn't be Santander would it? Their name is mud in the UK, due to the fuckups they create, and the (lack of) customer service when the customers notice the fuck ups.

    No, a local branch of BNP Paribas.



  • @Grogovich said:

    In saying the above though some Australian banks are in planning to move into what they call their "Real Time" systems, involving major rewrites of critical software. Commonwealth bank for example is mid way through completing these tasks, with parts of the system completed in use, and are the first here to undertake it (see http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/real-time/ ).
    Their real time system though is shitty. I never did CBA to CBA transactions, mainly doing buying things. And to be honest, I don't care precisely where I did the transaction instantly, all I care about is you taking the money out completely and not just changing my ledger balance.

    @Grogovich said:

    National Australia bank are also currently in the late design / early development phases of their "real time" project called "NextGen", as well as multiple other core upgrades. See http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/06/this-is-the-year-for-nab-core-banking-overhaul/ .

    This has been going on for ages. Quite frankly, NAB being NAB, I would expect them to stuff it up several times between now and whenever they actually finish it.



  • If anyone's curious, in this country there's an interbank system (with a stupid name) that's ran by a corporation whose shareholders are most major banks together.

    It's based on X.25 via dialup, X.25 via VPN, or, if you prefer, X.400 via floppy. (supposedly still used by some rural branches.)

    Each bank has sends a batch three times a day, and receives a batch three times a day, during their assigned time window. That's Mon-Fri, doesn't work on weekends.

    So, if you make a transfer in the morning, it usually arrives in the target bank the same day, in early afternoon, and if you make a transfer before 3pm it should be there around 6pm (depending on whether your bank's next send window is before or after recipient bank's next receive window).

    Once a batch is processed, money's in the account, you can use it.

    Now, in great majority of banks, "internal" transfers, both between your own accounts and to other accounts in the same bank (not currnt branch, all brances belonging to the bank) are "instant". (As in, few seconds up to few minutes.). The only bank that I saw that seems be using the same batch system for "internal" as for interbank transfers, with all the limits (3 batches/day, doesn't work on weekends) is the division of Deutsche Bank operating in this country.

    And this is a place that was on the red side of Iron Curtain.





    Wait... which means we started having banks and computerization around 1990. Western banks are still using the same 1970s IBM S/360 assembly code they did since the start.

    Explains it all, I guess...



  • @AquaDuck said:

    Reading this thread makes me appreciate my credit union even more. Instant transfers between my accounts, cash deposits at the credit union office are fully available immediately, no monthly fees for anything, and I can even transfer between my account and another credit union member's account and have it take effect right away.

    Also, the ATMs that 7-Eleven uses are on the same network that the various credit unions are on (at least here in California). With 7-Eleven having stores almost everywhere in Southern California, it's easy to find a 24-hour no-fee ATM when I need one.

    If you don't belong to a credit union, however, the 7-11 ATMs charge quite a bit to use.



  • Must be related to how companies can take our money instantly, but a refund takes weeks to process.



  • @lolwtf said:

    Must be related to how companies can take our money instantly, but a refund takes weeks to process.
     

    That's because, as my father used to point out, they're located farther away from you than you are from them.



  • On a somewhat related note:

    I got a call from my mum this morning saying that they'd had a plumbing emergency (went to turn the shower off, something went 'ping' and the water wouldn't go off) and wanting to know if I could cover the plumber's bill until her next pay came through. I went to the computer, she put the plumber on the phone, I got his firm's account details, made the transfer and gave him the receipt number. Total time of the call was 3 minutes and 49 seconds. I do love electronic banking.



  • Of course if your "mum" would just save some money for an emergency it would have been a non-issue, you wouldn't have had to micro-loan her at all, fast transfer or not.



  • It's a bit hard for her to save; she's on a disability pension and her husband is unemployed. They have enough trouble just covering regular expenses - between them they get about as much in a month as I do in a week. I don't quite understand your apparent hostility. I'm happy to help her out; isn't that one of the things family is supposed to be for?



  • well said Scarlet. There are plenty of people today, even some in my family who just don't have as much as others, due to various circumstances. Not everyone has surplus to save, many people can pay the bills and buy food and thats almost their paycheck.


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