10k UKP gone missing between UK/France

[M3GS]

I am currently having one hell of a time with my regular currency dealers over a sum of UKP10,000 of Euros, which they transferrred to CA on 25th July and has never reached my account.

They have provided me with what they say is faxed evidence of the transfer which shows the money leaving the Bank of England bound for my French account. All details are correct so seemingly no possibility of error there.

I need the money early next week in order to complete the final payment on my French house, and will be very embarrassed if it doesnt arrive in time. All previous transfers have gone perfectly, with funds arriving in my acount the very next day every time.

The dealers say they are making enquiries but have so far come up with nothing. I have contacted my CA branch, and faxed them the transaction 'proof' but they still tell me that their international dept has no record at all.

Am I correct in holding the dealers responsible, as they last had custody of my money? I hope so as I have now threatened them with solicitors if they do not either refund the money or re-transfer it on Monday.

Does anyone know exactly how these transfers work, and how in the world 14500-odd Euros could disappear into space? Any advice most welcome...

Roger

[chris pp]

I think that you may find that it happens all the time. It happened to me a few years back, eventually I managed to get the local bank here to contact the foreign transfer dept in Paris by phone with the exact amount etc and it was sitting in an account "for incorrect details", basically, someone along the line had typed in a wrong digit.

Chris

[LesLauriers]

I had the same problem with the Halifax  - they finally found the money in a German bank, but it took some time. They said it wasn't lost - they just didn't know where it was!

In my case it was around 100k GBP and it was "not lost" for around 10 days.

[Sunday Driver]

From what you say, your UK currency dealer has complied with your instructions and has provided you with proof that your order was correctly executed.

As Chris says, it's probably sitting in a suspense account at CA waiting to be identified during their routine reconciliation.  Push your bank, not your dealer.

[M3GS]

Thanks for the fast response. I will push CA of course, and if necessary I'll picket the branch until they sort it out. Still, the blase attitude of the dealer really pees me off as well!

I also think that as the dealer was entrusted with the money he has some legal obligation here. Effectively I have paid for a service and he has literally failed to deliver.

[Benjamin]

Some people have a more laid back attitude than others although I can imagine how difficult it is when it's your money.

Your currency dealer has done exactly what you asked him to do and has no doubt double checked all of the paper work at his end. Dealing with so many different banks they must see this going on all the time.

Wait until Tuesday unless you can find a phone number for C A's foreign desk and then camp out at your local branch until they sort it out for you.

Best of luck. It will turn up and keeping calm and rational will hopefully get you a better response than going at it too strongly.

Benjamin

[Russethouse]

 I think I would contact both parties - our business means that payments are transferred to us from abroad, last year several thousand pounds disappeared, I kept invoicing the client, they kept saying they had sent it etc - our bank contacted their dept for foreign transfers and one amount had 'hit' their system but been returned for incorrect details. It turned out it was sitting in an account of the issuing bank especially for funds this happens to.

You need to ask your dealer to check if it has been returned to whichever financial institution they use and ask CA to check if a payment for the amount you are expecting has recently been rejected at their clearing centre for foreign transactions.

Remember it only takes someone to mis-key something somewhere along the line and the whole thing goes pear shaped !

Good Luck.......

[Cassis]

I assume you have checked the CA IBAN etc carefully on the transfer document to make sure it is correct?  One digit out and it'll disappear into the ether.  If they've made other transfers to the same account you wouldn't expect them to cock it up, but you never know.

[M3GS]

Cassis,

I have scrutinised the document very carefully and the IBAN, account numbers, etc are perfectly correct.

It does look to me like CA have 'lost' the funds on the face of it. However there is a clear contract between myself and the currency dealer - which includes transfer of the money into my CA account. No doubt they will say they did everything correctly, but they are so arrogant and dismissive that cannot help feeling that they are more responsible than they actually are.

Whatever happens I shall not be utilising their services again.

Running a company which relies entirely on customer service myself makes it an even more bitter pill to swallow I suppose...

I'll just have to wait until Tuesday when I arrive at the bank in France. In the meantime there are some red hot emails and faxes flying around, but given my experience of French bureaucracy and customer service levels I can't help but feel pessimistic!

Of course as one of the above posters said, best to keep a cool and calm head and stick with cold reasoning rather than fly off the handle every 2 mins. Its still a worry though!

Thanks

Roger

[Russethouse]

 I shouldn't get too steamed up - frankly you are better off than I was when I started trying to trace our the funds that were lost - at least you know some of the probabilities.

It need not be the fault of either of the parties you are dealing with - I doubt its only them that are responsible for the keying, and I suspect that is where the error is.(even if they have the details correct a mis-key is easy enough)

As far as I know if a bank receive funds they cannot alot to an account they are returned to the issuer. The issuer may have a seperate account for these and thats where I would ask them to look as well as CA checking what their foriegn payments department has rejected.

During the 6 months our money was 'missing' we received many payments from the same people without mishap..........

Just take a deep breath and calmly ask both parties to check............

Best of Luck

[Kergohy]

You might want to ask the bank what they have done with your funds - we have just had all sorts of trouble with our branch of CA (Cotes d'Armor) who seem to have taken to anti-money laundering with enthusiasm.  We were obliged to spend 1.5 hours in our local branch, having been told that as we had transferred more than 8000E, the source of our funds had to be identified.  We were also told that we had to tell them exactly what the money was for.  The funds left our UK a/c on 18/7 and the first time the bank tried to contact us was on 27/7 ....  In addition, despite being assured that there would be no problem with the funds, when we tried to get a banker's cheque on the morning of 1/8 to pay for a car, it took them another half an hour to find out that the money would be credited to the account (pobably) that afternoon.

Not a word of apology for the messing about, simply a "c'est la loi" and 'it's not my fault '.....  We never did tell them what the money was for - suggested that the clerk might consider how she would feel if she only got her pay cheque from the bank after telling what she planned to spend the money on......  Funds were finally credited to our a/c by the end of the 1/8, but if we'd been in the UK, we'd never have known the money hadn't got to our a/c. 

Tomorrow, we are off to see HSBC France (ex CCF, I think)  We can apparently transfer funds online without charge between a/c and between currencies (apart from the usual exchange rate stuff) - so we'll see how that works.  It does sound like the answer to over-enthusiastic anti-money laundering .....

M

 

[Cassis]

Judith (a former bank manager, but remarkably human and friendly despite this stain on her background) says that the problem is that the bank staff are strung up by the goolies if they don't obey the money laundering legislation to the letter.  They are having to check so many transactions that the poor sods in charge of checking these matters are totally swamped and just can't cope.  Net result hopeless backlogs, delays and money apparently 'missing'.  Not enough resources, i.e. extra staff, devoted to the task by the senior directors, please don't blame the individuals you actually see in the bank.  Blame lies outside the branches at head office level.

[Kergohy]

Girl in our bank reckoned this was the first time she'd done this money laundering stuff.... find it hard to believe, but there you are.  Will keep you posted about the HSBC possibilities. 

[Chancer]

It's happened to me and two other friends in this region, each time the money has not reached our account and the local branch naturally knew nothing about it and was not too keen to pursue the matter.

In each case the money was finally found in a suspense account in Paris or at head office but the information had never been communicated to the local branch.

I actually feel quite sorry for the local branch when a foreign customer arrives asking where his/her money is, where do they start?

[P]

Roger

My sympathies are with the dealer - it is the bank that is at fault.

Banks are wonderful institutions. Look at how long it takes for money to be credited to an account - a wonderful interest free loan to them.

My wife opened a savings account with a UK bank. She had to provide proof of identity tc and was told that she could take it in to a branch, which she did. She also asked if she could pay money in or had to wait (she had the account details, i.e. account number etc) until the identity proof had been accepted. She was told that she could pay money in now, so handed over 2 cheques for £55,000. A couple of weeks later, she phoned with a query to be told 'the account has been closed' and no record of any money being in it. Naturally, they said they would phone back but did not. She phoned again and had to keep epeating the story to each person. She eventually tired of this and wrote to the CEO. She eceived a call asking her to obtain copies of the cheques from her bank so that they could track down where the money was!

The account was eopened and the money credited along with interest from when she opened the account.

Then a letter, of which the Monty Python crowd would have been proud of, in which the CEO (or whoever wrote it on his behalf) apologised most vigourously stressing that this had been unacceptable etc along with a cheque for £100 for the inconvenience.

All in all a little frustrating.

So Roger, this was a bank doing everything themselves. To draw an analogy with the currency dealer and my wife. The dealer and my wife both paid money to the banks. If it is the currency dealers fault then it is also my wifes fault for paying money in to the bank.

Paul

PS I appreciate how frustrating it is.

[Lori]

Same thing happened to us about a year ago.  Transfer to a C/A (Alpes Provence) account never showed.  After 3 weeks, local branch knew nothing.  In the end, it was found in a suspense account in Paris.  Very frustrating.

 

[BQF]

I am an auditor for a UK Bank, and I have had regular fun with 'missing

currency payments'......basically the problem with the international

payments system is SWIFT - it's the 'glue' that holds the international

payments system together and it is frankly a little outdated.  Let

me explain how the system works.

The currency broker will have his Bank in the UK - let's say its

Barclays.  he will instruct Barclays to pay a currency amount to

your account in France.  This is where the fun starts.

Barclays may have a direct 'relationship' with CA in France - in which

case CA are the 'correspondent' Bank - if this is the case Barclays

simply 'transfer' the funds via a SWIFT 'message' and the banks debit

and credit their Nostro and Vostro accounts (don't ask!).  This is

fine, usually, and involves minimal checking.  However....

If Barclays don't have a 'relationship' with CA, they will 'route' the

payment via an 'agency' bank either in the UK or France, for example

maybe Citibank in the UK, or BNP in France.  If this is the case

the payment goes from Barclays to Citibank to CA, perhaps even via

another agency bank in France, so the payment could either be routed

like this:

Currency Dealer > barclays > CA > You!, OR

Currency Dealer > Barclays > Citibank > CA > You!, OR

Currency Dealer > Barclays > Citibank > BNP > CA > You!

The complexity is often because payments get 'stacked' in 'in-trays',

which is particularly a problem if American Banks are involved as

correspondents or agents, as they are paranoid around routing funds to

'inappropriate' groups (its the war on terror I am afraid!), and so

take a loooooong time to check every payment v throughly before letting

it through their 'gateway'.

In your case, I wouldn't blame the currency dealer or even CA - they

might not even have any knowledge of the payment yet.  The people

that should be in charge of the situation are the 'remitting bank' - in

this case Barclays, and the currency dealer should be barking at them.

Everyone agrees this is a crappy situation to be in, but something

called 'The Single European Payments Directive' which is due to come

into play in January 2007 will imrpove things.

Banks get a lot of hostility because of payments, but it's really a

political problem.  If the system is improved it reduces the

'barriers to entry' to payments business in the EU for all domestic

banks.  Lets face it, if there is one country which wouldn't want

a British bank transacting their payments domestically....it would be

France!!!

I hope that makes sense - I have tried to keep a complex nightmare

system simple!  Just be glad you're sending money to France - I

once sent some money to Latvia for a client that was 'routed' via a

bankrupt bank......ah, the happy days of Corporate Banking!!

[Lori]

BQF - that is exactly what happened to us.  When I called Citibank, they faxed me all the wire data and it was all correct.  They use an intermediary in the UK for transfers to C/A in France.  That is where the problem lies.  And it happens rather regularly.  The biggest gripe I have with this is that Citibank will not give me the address or phone number of their intermediary for contact.  They say it is against their policy.  I don't understand this as it is my money.  It can be very frustrating.  And, I had to speak to several, dare I say not intellectuals, before I even got this information.

In our case, the mistakes are made by the intermediary and when C/A gets the money, they don't have the correct data on the account in which to credit.  Hence the lost money and the suspense account.

 

[Jc]

The answer seems to be "avoid Citibank".I regularly tranfer money using "Tipanet" from my Co-op account to my CL account and have never had any concerns.When I bought,I ordered a bank draft in French currency from my Co-op bank in favour of my notaire.It seems that most people in their efforts to save the last few pennies end up paying pounds!!

[Lori]

Jc - you are probably right.  Only thing is, our Citibank account allows us 3 free monthly wire transfers (in any currency).  If we went to an independent wire transfer service, we would certainly encounter fees - at least I assume they charge something.  The 3 week lost transfer was the only one that took that long to find.  More often than not, there isn't a problem, so for now, I am apprehensive to change the system. 

I must add that I don't really have much faith in the entire banking / transfer industry.  I just don't trust anybody anymore.  Unfortunately, bank accounts are a necessity.  Considering how hard we all work for our money, I wish the banks gave us better service.

 

[tenniswitch]

[quote user="BQF"]The complexity is often because payments get 'stacked' in 'in-trays', which is particularly a problem if American Banks are involved as correspondents or agents, as they are paranoid around routing funds to 'inappropriate' groups (its the war on terror I am afraid!), and so take a loooooong time to check every payment v throughly before letting it through their 'gateway'.[/quote]

Interesting, but not surprising.  There is a lot of paranoia over here.  I've been pleasantly surprised at how smoothly our few transfers from our US bank (SunTrust) have gone so far.  Perhaps it's because we, or at least my husband, are well-known to the bank personnel here?  Although that wouldn't affect the intermediary bank (I'm pretty sure SunTrust doesn't deal directly with CA). 

The only problem we've had with CA occurred when they lost a cashier's check we'd sent (before we ever thought to try a wire transfer).  When we queried our missing deposit, CA responded that our check had "wandered in the system" and requested us to stop payment on the original and send a replacement.  Fortunately our US bank was happy to do both at no charge to us.

[Benjamin]

[quote user="tenniswitch"]

 There is a lot of paranoia over here. 

[/quote]

I bet M3GS is really going to be pleased to know that they don't really have much of a problem as it's just them being paranoid.

Benjamin

[tenniswitch]

[quote user="Benjamin"][quote user="tenniswitch"]

 There is a lot of paranoia over here. 

[/quote]

I bet M3GS is really going to be pleased to know that they don't really have much of a problem as it's just them being paranoid.


Benjamin
[/quote]

I'm afraid that you misunderstood me.  The paranoia to which I referred exists in the US.  

I was responding to the remark about the complications when US banks are involved.  It was interesting to me because we've transferred money from the US to France without (so far) problems.

[Benjamin]

Go to the start of this thread and read what was posted.

Benjamin

[tenniswitch]

[quote user="Benjamin"]Go to the start of this thread and read what was posted.


Benjamin
[/quote]

Did that after I googled M3GS and got a listing for a blog on MySpace.  I thought you were referring to the global summit or something.

I was correcting my post while you were posting, I guess.