

Ask HN: I never received $13200 a company claims to have paid. What do I do? - uhoh_throwaway

Help! What do you do if a company claims to have paid you, shows a screenshot of the transaction, and your own bank claims to have zero knowledge of the transfer?<p>This is a <i>very</i> reputable software company that claims to have paid me $13200 for my work in September, but my bank has no knowledge of any transfer. Meanwhile the other company&#x27;s bank says that the wire transfer was not rejected, so as far as they know this amount is in my account now. I need this money (it&#x27;s what I work for), is there anything I can do before getting a lawyer involved? I trust this company and I&#x27;ve already contacted my bank to verify that no transaction occurred.
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patio11
The high-percentage cause is that the transfer was actually sent and it is
stuck in processing at your bank. This actually happens to a non-zero
percentage of transactions, and this is OK, because they get investigated and
recovered by CS teams. (Banks, surprisingly, aren't _actually_ ACID even
though everyone uses them as the canonical example of an ACID application.)

Escalate with your bank. You do not want to speak to Tier 1 telephone CS on
this. You want to speak to someone in their wires investigation department, or
to someone who can escalate a call to them. A very quick way to achieve this
is to go to the local branch, ask to see one of their business
representatives, and explain the situation then sit while they resolve things.
If they get the runaround, you ask for the branch manager, mention $10k+ is on
the line, and he escalates for you.

Another example is calling directly into the wire investigation group. Now
that you know it exists, you can probably figure out how to find it on Google.
(If you can't find their group call the Wealth Management group and say "Hiya,
someone told me to call you guys. $BIGCO made an incoming wire to my $MYBANK
account and it has gone missing. Can you trace it for me?" then wait while
they either do so or transfer you.)

Beyond the instant problem with the wire transfer, which is unfortunate,
please allow me the liberty of giving unsolicited business advice. It appears
that this situation rates "emergency" for your business. That should _never
happen_ with regards to one single payment, because routine business mishaps
(like, e.g., a bank delaying a payment) will routinely cause events like this
to happen.

There are a variety of ways to control for your risk for this. Two which you
should implement, as soon as reasonably practical, are a) building up a
savings buffer such that you're not dependent on your cashflow to eat and b)
charging more, which is partially justified by risks you absorb from having a
freelancer/consultant/etc charging model and not being a W-2 employee who
could walk to Payroll and say "I don't care what the problem is, just fix it"
and having the expectation that Payroll would _leap_ to fix that.

~~~
uhoh_throwaway
Thank you for your advice, this is seriously helpful. Re: Business, this was
only a short-term contract that started after a startup I work for was
acquired. I'm not a contractor or a businessman, and I'm already back working
as a permanent employee somewhere else now. That my bank is in California
while I am in Massachusetts makes raising hell a bit more difficult. Why it is
an "emergency" has more to do with family law matters and less so that I can't
put food on my table.

Thanks again.

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davismwfl
Also, get the FED ID for the wire. This will make tracing it far easier and
faster for your bank to find out what is going on. I just had to do this, but
the other way, where we wired someone money and they didn't receive it as
expected. Using the FED ID and Wire Transaction ID their bank was able to find
and fix the issue very quickly, to both our relief.

If it wasn't a wire and instead was an ACH, then get the batch ID for the ACH
and give that to your bank and see if it helps any. ACH is traceable but from
my limited knowledge is a little tougher to trace than a wire is.

------
MalcolmDiggs
I'm sure you've covered this already, but just in case you haven't: Make sure
you double and triple check the account numbers on the wire receipt (should be
on the screenshot).

I was in a similar situation once (and was summoning the dogs of war) but when
I read the receipt closely it turned out the sender had inverted two numbers
on my account.

~~~
joshschreuder
What happens in this case? Is the money gone to the incorrect account, or is
there a way of chasing up that person to get it back (and does it depend on
the amount in question?)

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
I'm not sure. In my case I just alerted the sender and he went in person to
his bank. The money was in my account less than an hour later, no idea how
they made it happen.

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codegeek
Just adding to patio11's advice, you need to find the "wire department" within
your bank and go talk to someone in person if possible. The wire departments
have their own systems that a usual representative may not have access to.
Your best bet is to talk to someone in wire or someone who can connect you
with wire team and then investigate.

~~~
uhoh_throwaway
Yep, both of your advice about getting this in front of the wire department
did the trick. They found that the payment was held up because it was somehow
not being routed through the correct overseas entity (this is for an overseas
client). Having a good point of contact at the branch where I opened the
account helped a lot too. Thanks!

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loqqus
Others have probably told you this already but there's no need to jump to
getting a lawyer involved at this point. It's most likely an unintentional
screw up.

Continue following up with both the company and the bank. If it is urgent, I
would also let your supervisor at the company know, because the HR trolls who
run this stuff at big companies are usually incompetent, and a pissed off
manager at the company is more likely to be able to produce results from them
than you are. (And any manager should be pissed off that employees or
contractors are not being paid promptly.)

------
keithwarren
There should be trace numbers associated with the wiring of the money - start
with getting that number from the company and then give it to your bank.

The good news is stuff like this doesn't get lost in some 'check is in the
mail' scenario. There is an audit trail that can be proved.

