[Resolved] Bank Lost My Money for House Deposit ($200K)

Lozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 08:53
Last edited 04/03/2021 - 16:09 by 1 other user

To make a long story short, we’ve put/transferred $200K deposit for a house last Monday (1/03/20) and did it via RTGS/Teletransfer. I’ve made lots of transactions bigger than that before with the same bank and never had a problem. Usually, it only takes 2 hours for the money to clear but this time it didn’t.

I called the bank after a day and stated my concern. They told me to wait close of business day Wednesday (03/03/21) due to the ‘large amount’ transferred. I know it’s BS as I’ve done this numerous times and RTGS in my experience is a same day transaction if you did it before 2pm. Just this morning, the recipient’s solicitor contacted me and stated the money still not received. That’s when i went to the bank manager and now started to get concerned. The acct details of the recipient was correct as we checked it multiple times. The manager was also puzzled and stated this is the first time in her 28 years that she had this problem. I’m a bit relieved that an Investigation is going now and i was assured they will find the money and return it or they will be in dip problem as per the manager.

Question - Has anyone in ozbargain experienced this and what usually happens?

4/3 230pm UPDATE - Recipients bank confirmed the funds has now cleared. NAB manager explained that i was the luck of the draw. Apparently it was put on hold by their bank (St George) for investigation (Random check) in regards to their anti money laundering policy. I couldn’t care less whatever their reason. I’m just glad the money was found and now we can continue the purchase of our house. Thanks everyone!

Financial

closed Comments

    • john_conner on 04/03/2021 - 12:55
      +3

      Yes because no one ever put in the wrong transfer address and lost their bitcoin forever…

    • deme on 04/03/2021 - 13:08

      Try reversing a shitcoin payment

    • mbck on 04/03/2021 - 13:30

      Wasn't there a heist in one of the exchanges in Japan? Mount something…hundreds of millions gone. Probably worth billions now with the price of bitcoin.

  • Venustrap87 on 04/03/2021 - 13:10
    +1

    I’m wondering why u had to transfer that much. Was it a 20% deposit on a property?

    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 14:45

      30% deposit.

  • Poor Ass on 04/03/2021 - 13:31

    should of used XRP lol

    • mandelbrot on 04/03/2021 - 14:08

      Should have used XMR. Untraceable.
      A bit like OP's $200k

      • Poor Ass on 04/03/2021 - 14:27

        lol I swear nobody uses monero there's no use for it really

    • monkeyfood on 04/03/2021 - 14:16

      then bought ada

      • Poor Ass on 04/03/2021 - 14:26

        should of bought MATIC last month

  • madmo on 04/03/2021 - 13:37

    https://www.pedestrian.tv/entertainment/emese-fayk-the-block…

    Emese had this issue too

  • gtrain on 04/03/2021 - 14:20

    I would refuse to do this without PayID nowadays. That way you get a visual confirmation of who the account holder is that you transferred the money to. Highly encourage everyone to use this instead of giving up your BSB & Account. You can use email, phone number or ABN.

    https://www.payid.com.au/

    • c64 on 04/03/2021 - 14:23
      +1

      the problem is most banks have a very low limit for payid. a bank cheque sounds safest to me

    • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 14:52

      I would refuse to do this without PayID nowadays

      Lots of businesses (real-estate agents, solicitor trust accounts) don't have PayID. That's not to say that the payment wouldn't go out through NPP anyway, if both the sender and recipient banks have implemented it. Also the payment wouldn't necessarily be instant, even via NPP. Most banks deliberately delay payments to new payees.

      That way you get a visual confirmation of who the account holder is

      Not all banks do that. There was a security breach a few months ago, where people were using payid to do a reverse lookup on people's mobile numbers.

  • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 14:28

    we’ve put/transferred $200K deposit for a house last Monday

    Your profile shows you're in NSW. Did you really buy a $4m house? Did your solicitor forget to negotiate a 5% deposit for you.

    the recipient’s solicitor contacted me

    Why are you paying a deposit to the recipient? Normally a deposit is held in trust with the real-estate agent until settlement. Did you solicitor forget about this too? Did your solicitor advise you to remove any contract clauses that allow the deposit to be released to the vendor?

    I know it’s BS as I’ve done this numerous times and RTGS in my experience is a same day transaction if you did it before 2pm.

    Why would you use RTGS for this? A regular payment (not even NPP) would've been fine, but yeah, that could have random issues too.

    Question - Has anyone in ozbargain experienced this and what usually happens?

    Nope - never had an issue with RTGS for other payments. Lots about your story doesn't make sense to me.

    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 14:42
      +3

      Dude, who says it’s a $4M house? It’s a 30% deposit for a house in Central Coast. And I’m one of those people who saved up for a higher deposit than just paying 5% and bury myself with high repayments + LMI. Plus, was able to negotiate a lower interest rate due to 60/40 LVR.

      It’s an off market sale. Which means, no real estate involved and it’s between the vendor’s solicitor and mine.

      RTGS? Because it’s more than the 40K daily limit transfer that i can do.

      Bottomline, if you find the ‘story’ doesn’t make sense, probably because you don’t know all the fine details which I’m not open to share and was not the point of this post. The point was if someone had experience funds missing/delayed for whatever reason.

      • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 14:48

        It’s a 30% deposit for a house in Central Coast

        A 30% deposit still doesn't make much sense to me. Your solicitor should advise you against this sort of deposit.

        no real estate involved and it’s between the vendor’s solicitor and mine.

        The deposit should still be held in trust with one of the solicitors. Interestingly, some banks accounts can't receive RTGS payments … could explain what happened here.

        RTGS? Because it’s more than the 40K daily limit transfer that i can do.

        Funny how 5% of 666k comes to 33k. Sounds like someone has a crappy solicitor.

        The point was if someone had experience funds missing/delayed for whatever reason.

        You're welcome not to answer, but yeah, lots of people can't resist taking the bait.

        • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 14:58

          *70/30 . Yeh, everybody are entitled to their own views and life decisions. I may have a crappy solicitor but he’s also the one who helped us with our financial structure and grow our wealth. Each to their own so they say.

          • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 15:17
            +1

            @buckethat:

            My mate recently purchased a house and had to put down a 20% deposit because he didnt want to pay LMI and wanted to borrow as little as he could afford to. Not sure what's wrong with that.

            I think you guys are mixing up the terms "deposit" and "down payment".

            A deposit is what you pay when contracts are exchanged. In NSW, it's 10% on the standard contract and the vast majority of vendors will accept 5% without much hesitation.

            The "down payment" can be whatever you want, but it should only be paid at settlement, via bank cheque or the electronic settlement system (PEXA or something). I assume the OPs story is about the deposit, since he didn't mention PEXA.

            I may have a crappy solicitor but he’s also the one who helped us with our financial structure and grow our wealth

            Certainly sounds like conveyancing isn't his forte. I hope his financial advise is better, but it's also not clear to my why a solicitor is giving financial advise.

            • buckethat on 04/03/2021 - 15:20

              @salmon123: You're absolutely right salmon123, I did mix up deposit and down payment. If OP does really mean deposit, then yeah 30% does sound a bit crazy.

            • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:22

              @salmon123: Agree.. it’s a downpayment. Apologies for the mix up.. im not that rich for such amount for only a ‘deposit’.. my bad.. been a stressful week. As stressful as settling the house and these happened on top of it.

              • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 15:28

                @ozricoy:

                As stressful as settling the house and these happened on top of it.

                Another thing your solicitor should've advised you on.

                RTGS for house settlements is strange, because it's not "immediate enough" (along with a bunch of other stuff). That's why they needed PEXA.

                • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:33

                  @salmon123: Private off market transaction.. nothing illegal, just not the norm. And like i said, you maybe right he’s a crappy solicitor in regards to conveyancing… He’s old as dirt but really knowledgeable with money. But may not hire him if there is a next purchase.

                  • salmon123 on 04/03/2021 - 15:39

                    @ozricoy:

                    Private off market transaction.. nothing illegal

                    I wasn't suggesting anything illegal, but it's really strange the vendors solicitor and the banks agreed to these terms too. I'm not a conveyancer, so I might be out of my depth here too. If I had to guess, I'd say your down payment went to a solicitors trust account and the settlement is actually booked for another day, using PEXA.

                    The only thing that would be different, if there was a real-estate involved, is how the deposit is handled. Everything else should be more or less the same.

                    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:43

                      @salmon123: I’m in the same boat as you. I’m not an expert on the field and was just following the advise. These are all in the contract too. But yeh, lesson learned. Freaking stressed out all week due to this inconvenience.

  • tooblue on 04/03/2021 - 14:56

    … I’ve made lots of transactions bigger than that before with the same bank and never had a problem.

    What Do People Do to Afford Such Life?
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/604507

  • Fier2 on 04/03/2021 - 15:14

    Not saying it but either you re bad at math or either you add an extra 0 to the amount. Unless the house you want to buy is around the 2 million mark. And, no. Bank doesn't lost money. There are alaways trace in the system somewhere.

    What could have happen is you haven t make a big transaction for a year and then suddenly decide to do it without advising your bank which will triggered a security alarm on their side thinking it's fraudulent and make them blocking the transfer altogether and it should bounce back into your account in the next 76hrs or receive by the recipient by then because you finally confirm with them.

    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:20

      I do make big transactions regularly from our business and investments. This transfer was done via RTGS in a NAB branch as well so not sure what you meant by advising my bank as they did the transfer themselves. Also, It has cleared to the recipients account now and the explanation i got was the recipient’s bank was the one who hold it.

  • Berno on 04/03/2021 - 15:33
    +1

    In Jan I transferred 10k from a CBA account.
    Used the address book and visually confirmed all details were correct. After weeks of waiting other party still hadn't received funds so told me to start a trace with CBA. CBA graciously waived the usual fee to search for the money lost due to no mistake of my own.
    I had initially heard that I would get a result in 18 days and was pretty irritated by this. When I phoned up that my 18 days was up with no response I was told it can be many months before I get a result.
    Seriously. I have been pissed about this whole situation but have thought what if someone was buying a house or that amount of money was everything to them.
    People could end up in financial distress just because Banks in Australia are incompetent and large sums of money can vanish into the ether without a trace?

    Is this 2021 or 1985?
    I mean I'm not completely informed on B2B systems and how hard it is to look at the data trail but I contracted in the I.T. section of a big 4 bank for some years and was under the impression most of this was automated.

    How the hell do you lose large sums of money like this?
    Do they just play hedge fund with it for a while because we basically can't do anything about it?

    Anyway I'm sorry for your situation.
    Do we go to A Current Affair to hurry up the process?
    Sure it would turn up suddenly then ;)

    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:35
      +1

      Thanks @berno. I was close to explode as we are settling a house and needed that money desperately. They don’t even give you regular updates unless you ring them. Fortunately, it has now cleared and the settlement is now pushing through.

      • Berno on 04/03/2021 - 15:55

        Glad it's worked out for you.
        I'm voting with my feet and am moving everything away from CBA.
        No doubt NAB isn't perfect but CBA has by far the worst reputation on r/AusFinance/ on reddit after I looked into it.

        I also worked on some software for AUSTRAC and back then at least (early 2000's) any transaction of 10k or more could get on their radar to investigate.

        Good luck.

  • rockman117 on 04/03/2021 - 15:41

    its at Bill's house and Fred's house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef99bFBTR54&ab_channel=McCla…

  • loropy9 on 04/03/2021 - 15:43
    +1

    OP, if you put in the correct acc and bsb, you have nothing to worry about. I hope you took a photo when the transaction was made and there is a receipt or something to say that such amount was sent to such account.

    • ozricoy on 04/03/2021 - 15:46

      @laropy9. Thanks man. All the details are correct. Even the poor bank teller who processed the transaction was stressed. The receipt clearly shows everything was done right with the right details. Just the luck of the draw the recipients bank (St George) hold it up due to the large amount.

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