Who knew it would be this hard to give someone money?

The BBQ Pit
1

My daughter is buying her first car this weekend. We promised to help her out with the downpayment, so when we saw her last weekend we gave her a check for the promised amount. Tuesday she called and we realized that, due to her work schedule, she would not be able to get to a bank to deposit the check before Thursday at the earliest, so it would not have cleared by the time Saturday rolls around. This was a good point, and I commended her on her forethought.

“No problem,” said I, “I will transfer the money from my account to yours.” We bank at the same institution, and I transfer money back and forth between my own accounts quickly and easily on a regular basis. Surely transferring money from one account-holder to another at the same institution won’t be that much more complicated.

I can’t engage in my normal online transfer because I am not an account-holder on my daughter’s account (which is not unexpected), so I select the option to transfer to an “outside institution.” I put in all of her banking information and discover that this transfer:[ol]
[li]Will take 3 business days to complete (meaning she won’t get the funds until Monday)[/li][li]The amount I want to transfer is higher than the daily limit imposed by the bank and,[/li][li]The amount I want to transfer is higher than the monthly limit imposed by the bank.[/li][/ol]

I called the bank’s customer service number to see if there’s an option I’m missing. According to them I could walk into a local branch and handle this with a check and a paper deposit slip, but I am not anywhere near a branch this week. I could have my daughter add me as an account-holder to her checking account, or I could do a wire transfer. The wire transfer will cost $25 for me to send, and cost my daughter $15 to receive the transfer. Huh? You charge someone to receive money?

After discussion with my daughter, it looks like the only viable option is the wire transfer. We both hate the idea of the fees the bank will collect, but she just doesn’t have the time to spend on the phone with the bank, and God only knows how difficult they’ll make it to remove me from the account afterward. So I call the bank to do the wire transfer.

Apparently, I need to have set up a PIN with my local branch to do wire transfers by phone. I don’t remember ever doing this, so there goes that option.

Checked into Western Union and you don’t want to know what kind of fees were involved in that option.

I just want to give someone some money. Why is that so freaking hard?

2

Sounds like it all went wrong right here.

What bank requires you to be available during banking hours to deposit a check?

In your daughter’s position, i would have gone by an ATM last weekend and deposited the check. It would have been processed on Monday, and cleared comfortably before this weekend.

3

Yeah, every single bank I’ve ever seen has an ATM that lets you deposit checks any time of the day. Why was this not an option?

4

Have you thought about the good ol’ Postal Service?

USPS money transfers

5

OP’s daughter sounds too lazy to go to the ATM.

6

If you bank at the same institution, why would it take so long the check to clear? Is that what she was told by the bank?

Alternatively, she might be able to cash the check and then deposit the cash.

7

Well, whaddya expect? She can’t walk after years of driving.

8

I’d be surprised if a check, deposited at branch (as opposed to an ATM), before close of business* on Thursday wasn’t cleared by Friday morning. I deposit checks all the time and ever since Check21 was implemented, they’re always fully available for withdrawal by the next business day.

Otherwise, is she nearby to one of the banks your work with? She should be able to just walk in there and get the cash.

*Remember, some banks start “next day’s business” before 5:00 and some banks stay open past 5:00 on “next day’s business” but if she goes at, say, 2:00 in the afternoon, it shouldn’t be a problem.

9

OP’s daughter was visiting us in a town without any branches of our bank, and was on her way on business to another part of the country without any branches of our bank.

She graduated high school a year early, got her undergrad degree (cum laude) in three years, and got her Master’s in a year-and-a-half while also doing an internship and studying for and passing (with flying colors) her CPA exam. Lazy is not a word I would choose to describe her.

10

We were both told that online transfer, or deposited check would take 3 business days to clear. I assume they’re just using the float to make a couple of cents off of us.

11

Why don’t you write a check to the whatever institution she would be writing a check to Saturday? Why does the money for the downpayment need to come from her bank account?

12

Unless I’m wildly misreading, you … live in a town without any branches of the bank you deal with? :confused:

13

This turns out to be the way we’re going. Since the first post, I spoke to the car dealer. I didn’t think they’d accept a personal check from me if I was not there in person, but it turns out that they will if I send a photocopy of appropriate ID. So, immediate problem solved.

Still seems silly that I can’t do a reasonably quick online funds transfer between two accounts at the same institution; this was the thing that really bugged me the most.

14

We’re snowbirds, so half the year we’re in another part of the country. I do virtually all of my banking online, and this is the first time in at least 5 years that I have had to do anything that might possibly require me to go into a local branch. It’s never before been any kind of an inconvenience to be remote from my bank.

15

If you and your daughter travel alot from your home town, maybe you should consider switching to a nationwide bank, like BOA, Wells Fargo, Chase, etc.

16

Not terribly uncommon, especially for credit unions.

I work for the state, and my credit union is located in Harrisburg, PA. I live near Greensburg, which is quite a bit west. I’ve never had to visit the branch nor should I.

17

Why is this in the pit?

18

Because at one time or another, the OP intended to tell the bank to go fuck themselves.

19

My credit union belongs to a network of credit unions. You can do shared branch transactions at many branches of credit unions that aren’t yours but do belong to this network.

My folks gave me a check when I was out in AZ, and I deposited it in a credit union branch there that was affiliated with the credit union I belong to, which is only in NJ. Lovely stuff.

20

The banking industry has caught on to what is known as the “daughter/car” money laundering scheme. We are just trying to get the paper trail confirmed and then nab the perps.

The fictitious ‘parent’ tries to move a large amount of money toward a purchase for the ‘daughter’, then there are other ‘fees’ involved and before long there are links to Mexican drug cartels, the opium trade in the Fertile Cresent and probably slavery to boot.

You really thought you were going to get away with it, didn’t you carlb?