Bank Transfer From U.S. Did Not Go Thgough

[BarnicaleBob]

I attempted to transfer a $1,000.00 from my bank in the U.S. to my wife's account at the Bangkok Bank in Thailand. Because she had changed her last name (due to getting married) on the account and I sent the money to the correct account but in her maiden name the Bangkok Bank would not let the transfer go into her account. Bangkok Bank told her that they would send the money back to my account in the U.S. My bank in the U.S. had originally charged me a transfer fee but when the money came back they returned the fee. However, Bangkok Bank only sent back $968.00, I called my bank and they confirmed that was all the Bangkok Bank sent me. So it appears the Bangkok Bank has charged me $32.00 for not excepting the transfer. If the money did not go through how could they do that? Has anyone else ever had this problem and if so were you ever able to get Bangkok Bank to explain why they took money from you without rendering any service to you? Any suggestions on how to proceed to get my $32.00 back would be welcome.

Edited June 28, 2011 by BarnicaleBob

[taxout]

I'll leave it to others to justify or contest bank fee policies, but I assume the bank levied a charge here for the cost of wiring the money back.

Bank managers sometimes have authority to waive fees in exceptional circumstances for good customers, so there's no harm in your wife making such a request to the manager at her branch.

Edited June 28, 2011 by taxout

[Doc50]

Getting your $32 back from a Thai Bank, all I can say is don't hold your breath.

Getting the Thai Bank to explain to you the charge. The Bank is only thinking why should

we explain, don't you Farangs get it we charged you a fee, because we could.

Do you really want to sit in a Bank office for hours talking to a number of people and in the end get $0.

Time to say Mai Bpen Rai

Edited June 29, 2011 by metisdead
Font resized, please use default forum font.

[Soutpeel]

In this instance the bank is 100% correct in charging you, it was your mistake as you provided the wrong information on the transfer, because the name on the account and account number did not match up, FYI they did "accept" the transfer

Bangkok bank did render you a service..they wired it back to the orginal account and charged accordingly, based on the details provided they have followed accepted worldlwide banking procedures and were acting in your interests

IMHO you have no claim what so ever against BKK bank, instead of trying to get your $32, you should be sending them a thank you note...

[Pib]

Depending on the routing of the money to/from Bangkok Bank (i.e., maybe going through an intermediary bank which took a small slice going and coming) plus the Bangkok Bank receiving and sending fees I can easily see a $32 fee being racked up.

Agree with Post #2 above and you may also want to call Bangkok Bank Phone Banking Center 1333 or (66) 0-2645-5555 for service 24 hours a day. But I recommend you call during "their" day business hours as you have a much higher chance of talking to a real person and a person who deals with these types of matters versus the night shift crew. Hopefully you end up with one in their Headquarters folks in Bangkok on Silom Road which deals with these matters on a daily basis. I expect event the local branch manager might end up calling HQ on this matter. In fact, the transfer may have been stopped/rejected at the HQ versus the local branch.

[Soutpeel]

Depending on the routing of the money to/from Bangkok Bank (i.e., maybe going through an intermediary bank which took a small slice going and coming) plus the Bangkok Bank receiving and sending fees I can easily see a $32 fee being racked up.

Agree with Post #2 above and you may also want to call Bangkok Bank Phone Banking Center 1333 or (66) 0-2645-5555 for service 24 hours a day. But I recommend you call during "their" day business hours as you have a much higher chance of talking to a real person and a person who deals with these types of matters versus the night shift crew. Hopefully you end up with one in their Headquarters folks in Bangkok on Silom Road which deals with these matters on a daily basis. I expect event the local branch manager might end up calling HQ on this matter. In fact, the transfer may have been stopped/rejected at the HQ versus the local branch.

All your comments maybe true...but it was the OP's mistake (by his own admission) not the banks, therefore he has no recourse to claim the $32 transfer fees from BKK Bank.

BKK Bank acted in the proper manner during the execution of this transaction.....go and read your T&C's when you do bank transfers

The OP c*kced up and is trying to blame someone else...

[Daveroc]

The Bank in these cases is between a rock and a hard place. If they make the payment and it turns out incorrect the payer expects a refund. that is simply not a case of reversing the entry. The funds are often well gone before the mistake is realised.If they return it because the payer did not provide the correct infomation,causing additional processing costs, they are also critcised. The proper course is to return the payment . I am not sure why the Doc50 believes this is a anti farang issue. This is standard practice for all banks around the world.

[Soutpeel]

The Bank in these cases is between a rock and a hard place. If they make the payment and it turns out incorrect the payer expects a refund. that is simply not a case of reversing the entry. The funds are often well gone before the mistake is realised.If they return it because the payer did not provide the correct infomation,causing additional processing costs, they are also critcised. The proper course is to return the payment . I am not sure why the Doc50 believes this is a anti farang issue. This is standard practice for all banks around the world.

[Pib]

A newly wed mistake regarding not keeping each other updated on updating accounts with the new married name.

But since the OP said, "Bangkok Bank told her that they would send the money back to my account in the U.S." it seems Bangkok Bank could have easily confirmed the name on the account (assuming the account number remained the same) was indeed the same human but now with a new last name due to recent marriage, especially since I expect the husband and wife could have probably proved the person sending the money was the husband and he had just made a newly wed name mistake.

However, but, I don't expect all bank's want to spend that extra time in resolving such a issue and possibly adding some risk to the transaction...an issue which is really caused by the customer's mistake. Could the bank refund the return fee (or at least part of it)--sure they could depending on the circumstances, but under the T&C's they are probably not required...all up to the bank's polices. I'm glad the OP got his money back from the U.S. Sending bank, but I expect most bank's do not provide refund's unless it was their mistake.

[ianguygil]

I typed a long answer to this last night around midnight, then the net failed on me and the dog ate my homework.

Without getting too far into a specific case.... As stated, the Bank was entirely correct in not crediting funds to an account whose name differs from that in the payment instruction (SWIFT message). This is one of the basic checks in place to ensure there is not a mistake in the account number, which happens suprisingly often.

There are real (hard) costs involved here in all SWIFT messages, including the one back to your sending back which asked us to make the payment (this does not include the soft costs of the Bank staff time etc.). This is an exception from the Bank's standpoint, and things which do not go "straight through" cost money.

If you want to send me a PM, I will send you my Bank email address and I can put you in touch with our Global Payments people. They will then explain any charges made by Bangkok Bank. But you need to make contact with us and we will not get any further into this on a public forum like ThaiVisa.

You can then post what you want. Cheers.

Ian

Edited June 29, 2011 by ianguygil

[BarnicaleBob]

OK, I am giving this up as a lost cause not worth the time and effort to pursue it given that there most likely would not be a refund anyway. I will mark this incident up as a lesson learned, I should have asked my wife if she had changed her name on her bank account before sending more money. The thing that bothered me most was that I am in Thailand and did this transfer over my banks website then went to the Bangkok Bank with my wife and they would not give her or me the money in spite of them saying they had the money on hold in their banking system, we has all of her current and former ID and the fact it was still the same account number. They could have just handing me my money back right there rather than sending it back to my account in the U.S.

But I should have known common sense is not well known over here. So from now on I guess I am back to just using the ATM again, lesson learned.

So this subject can be closed now as far as I am concerned.

[metisdead]

So this subject can be closed now as far as I am concerned.

On that note, this topic is now closed.