A friend of mine has been waiting for several days for some funds (like $50, not $50 million or anything) to be transferred into his bank account. He’s waiting, waiting, waiting. No money. He finally goes to his bank to ask them if they can shed light on the delay. He’s told that, in order for funds to be transferred into his account, his account has to have at least $10 in it. His account had $9.40 in it, so the funds are out floating somewhere in cyberspace now, apparently.
Wow. I’ve never heard of this. My bank is quite happy to accept deposits, espacially when my balance is low or negative.
That being said, they do place holds on things, and, if I use the ‘withdraw cash when depositing a cheque’ option, I am limited to withdrawing the positive balance previously existing in the account.
The only thing I can think of is that the incoming funds are by wire, and the bank charges $10 to receive wires and they don’t pull that charge from the incoming funds.
That was my thought. They can’t take the fee from the incoming wire because you don’t have the wired money in yet. They can’t allow the wire to come in because you haven’t paid the fee yet. Seems kinda stupid, but that might be it.
I’ve only sent money by wire twice in my life, and both times it was at least $25. That might not be the best choice for sending $50…
ISTR paying the fee separately when sending as well. I don’t remember whether there was a fee to receive. (One of the transfers was international. That was fun. Trying to spell a Finnish destination address to a confused Canadian servioce rep while riding a very noisy bus…)
freckafree, please keep us informed: Did your friend deposit another 60 cents so that the money could enter his account, or is he still waiting, or what is happening?
The sender pays the fee, not the reciever. (I’ve recieved them a coupple of times when I was a poor starving student and my wonderful father bailed me out of a potentially bad situation.)
Is ISTR now an accepted acronym on this bbs? I gather it stands for “I seem to remember.” That’s not so common a phrase as to require a widely used shorthand, is it? Or are we just abbreviating phrases that are too long to bother to type out and hoping that the readers will take the time and make the effort to decipher our intent? Writing should be as transparent and clear as possible, and I think we need to be careful of what shorthand we use. ISHIDCO!
What’s up with transfer limits? I can’t transfer more than $1000 a day between two accounts that I own. My sister just ran into the same problem when she accidentally deposited a bunch of money into the wrong account and couldn’t transfer all of it over to the other account the same day (which, of course, was when her mortgage was due to be paid by online billing). Very fustrating.
That’s a good question. I can see the reasoning behind cash withdrawl limits at ATMs: they don’t want the supply of cash in the machine drawn down more quickly that it is usually replenished. But transfer limits between accounts owned by the same person? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just a case of ‘all accounts have transfer limits’, and it’s too inconvenient to add exceptions for transfers going to other accounts owned by the same person. In which case, it boils down to bank convenience, which may be anything from “We don’t feel like it because it would cut into our executive bonuses” to “It’s a great idea but it would require us to replace our entire accounting software, so even if we started now, you wouldn’t see any effects for five years”.
Often, there are transfer limits when you’re trying to do it yourself from an ATM or online. Talk to a banker and I can’t see any reason you shouldn’t be able to transfer as much money as you want on a given day.
It’s a sad trend, but any time a bank has a chance to cosh you with a fat fee, they will do it. This rule allows the bank to create a trap that is likely to cause an overdraft. Bang! $50! :smack: Seriously, small depositors don’t mean much to a bank in terms of profit, so they make the small time customer pay fees. Small potato accounts are more likely to bounce a check now and then, and the bank milks that fact for every dollar. Folks without much money need to keep a close eye on their bank accounts.
I had thought he told me it was a federal banking regulation but who knows? All Iknow is that on those rare instances that I get a check for more than $500 and I deposit it I can access $500 right away.
I’m in WA. I used to be with Bank of America, and they limited it to $100. (Deposit a $300 check, you can only use $100 of it untill they verify the check or whatever.) I switched to BECU, and it’s now $500.
Woo, data!
