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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8457901

by uhoh_throwaway • 12 years ago

13 10 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

This is a very 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'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's what I work for), is there anything I can do before getting a lawyer involved? I trust this company and I've already contacted my bank to verify that no transaction occurred.

patio11• 12 years ago

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_throwaway2• 12 years ago

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.

keithwarren• 12 years ago

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.

codegeek• 12 years ago

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_throwaway2• 12 years ago

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!

davismwfl• 12 years ago

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.

MalcolmDiggs2• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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?)

MalcolmDiggs2• 12 years ago

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.

loqqus• 12 years ago

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.)

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

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