Ever wire money?

[Muse]

I never did before yesterday.

I wanted to get back in the stock market so I opened a new trading account at ETrade yesterday. ACH's are slow and kind of cumbersome and the representatives I was talking to on the phone mentioned wiring money, which is so much simpler. Any amount and most banks don't seem to charge to do it, and the funds are available to trade basically immediately.

So, I called my online savings account, Marcus at Goldman Sachs and asked to wire most all the funds, about $240,000. I was transferred to a wiring specialist who took my info including the account number of my new account at ETrade, and their routing number. He tells me it should happen in about 2 hours and they'd call me if there was a problem. I think he said they'd call me anyway to give me the info, transaction numbers or something like that.

A few minutes later I called one of my other online savings accounts and set up a similar wire.

I check today and only the one from the 2nd bank showed up at ETrade. I check with Marcus at Goldman Sachs and see that my account has only about $10,000 left in it, IOW they transferred the money to ETrade. I call ETrade back and they insist they have no record of it. I'm getting nervous! ETrade said they want me to get a tracking number from Marcus but at Marcus there's no info other than the date, the amount and that the wire went to Etrade Bank.

Marcus is inaccessible by phone right now. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday, I can't tell.

I feel kind of in limbo. Does this kind of thing happen much?

ETrade has me wondering. The password I chose yesterday didn't work today. It didn't pass their algorithm for acceptable passwords although it totally complied with the rules. I called, got a temporary password, used it and tried to change to the one I chose yesterday and it didn't get past the algorithm. So I chose another. Then I tried to change that to the one that worked yesterday and was told I could not use any of my last 5 passwords! So, I'm using my 2nd idea. Nutty stuff!

 

[BoomerD]

You've been scammed. NEVER wire money to someone you don't know.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've never had a need to. I either use preauthorized payment for anything reoccurring, or etransfer for one time things to people I know IRL and can trust. For everything else I use Paypal.

Lot of companies will also be setup as a "bill payment" option with most banks. That's how I top up my stock account, it's basically setup the same way as manually paying a bill. I have it setup to send $20 every pay. The money sits until I decide to use it to buy stocks.

 

[ponyo]

That's strange. The money should've transferred from your Marcus account to Etrade immediately.

 

[Muse]

That's strange. The money should've transferred from your Marcus account to Etrade immediately.

I figure, and I'm nervous as you can imagine. Don't know. I did do two wires within an hour's time, possibly somebody got confused. I'm wondering if there's something fishy going on, maybe something internal to Marcus where I was handed over to a scammer by a Marcus rep. I will call Marcus tomorrow and see if they are answering the phone. If not, seems I have to wait until Monday.

 

[dasherHampton]

Ive never been able to wire money for free. I wired $10,000 to a friend at the beginning of the week and it cost $25.

I've never had a brokerage account that didn't require their account and your account to be linked. The usual process is this:

1) Give your account info to the brokerage
2) They deposit three small amounts of less than $1 into your account over the next few days
3) When you get all three amounts you fill out the corresponding boxes on the brokerage website

Only then are you free to transfer money between accounts. And for Christ's sake - transfer like $5000 first to make sure everything is ok.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I've only ever wired money at a closing for a home with 20% down payment.

There is also nothing "simple" as far as wiring money... wiring money also requires fees 99% of the time.

I'm leaning towards Boomer that you might be scammed - but regardless, you should always ACH when possible IMO.

 

[Muse]

Ive never been able to wire money for free. I wired $10,000 to a friend at the beginning of the week and it cost $25.

I've never had a brokerage account that didn't require their account and your account to be linked. The usual process is this:

1) Give your account info to the brokerage
2) They deposit three small amounts of less than $1 into your account over the next few days
3) When you get all three amounts you fill out the corresponding boxes on the brokerage website

Only then are you free to transfer money between accounts. And for Christ's sake - transfer like $5000 first to make sure everything is ok.

That sounds like ACH transfer. You set up your ACH connection between financial institutions using the 2 or 3 (used to be 3, seems to be 2 now) small transfers and your subsequent confirmation of he amounts at the institution where you made the ACH setup request.

This is wiring, and it can use the same routing number, although I think they can have more than one routing number.

I did do one successful and AFAIK free wire from my Synchrony Bank savings account yesterday to my new ETrade account yesterday, so it can obviously be done without the several small deposits confirmation protocols.

 

[Muse]

You've been scammed. NEVER wire money to someone you don't know.

This is not someone I don't know, it's my brokerage. E*Trade, they've been around for decades, one of the first discount brokerages. I used to have an account with them, just opened another. They are not fly by night.

 

[dasherHampton]

That sounds like ACH transfer. You set up your ACH connection between financial institutions using the 2 or 3 (used to be 3, seems to be 2 now) small transfers and your subsequent confirmation of he amounts at the institution where you made the ACH setup request.

This is wiring, and it can use the same routing number, although I think they can have more than one routing number.

I did do one successful and AFAIK free wire from my Synchrony Bank savings account yesterday to my new ETrade account yesterday, so it can obviously be done without the several small deposits confirmation protocols.

I certainly could be wrong, but it was always my understanding that a person had to link accounts "officially" before any money could change hands, including a wire transfer.

The only reason I state this is to agree that something seems weird about the way your transaction was handed.

 

[ponyo]

I certainly could be wrong, but it was always my understanding that a person had to link accounts "officially" before any money could change hands, including a wire transfer.

The only reason I state this is to agree that something seems weird about the way your transaction was handed.

You're talking ACH. He's talking wire. ACH takes over a day. Wire is pretty much instant. You have to verify with ACH setup. You don't need no verification with wire. You just need the account opened. You can reverse ACH even after payment. Wire is pretty much irreversible once it goes through as it's instant. My former business partner was almost scammed out of million dollars wire payment. Someone hacked his email account and hijacked his email pretending to be him. Luckily the accountant at the other company called him minutes before she was about to wire him the money to verify sending to new account. He had never opened the new account and that account was setup by the email scammer to receive the million dollar wire. You have to be super careful with wire transfer.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Yes, I have wired money but only because it seemed like the best of the limited options for making sizable foreign purchases. FWIW, I always had to go to the bank, provide banking information for the receiver, sign paperwork, and pay a service fee of roughly $35 for the privilege.

Just like any other form of money transfer, there may be a day or two between the time the money disappears from the sending account and appears in the receiving account. (Yes, it may be effectively gone instantly and not reversible, but that doesn't mean it arrives instantly in the other account.)

FWIW, I think you will want to establish a more standard (ACH) linkage between your brokerage and savings accounts for future transfers. And I cannot imagine why you would test out any transfer method with such a large amount of money.

I hope you see your money on Monday. 🤞🤞

 

[ponyo]

What time did you do the wire transfer to Etrade? Did you do it after 6 PM Eastern Standard time? If so, it will show up the next business day which will be Monday. If you did it before, then the money should've shown up in your account yesterday available for immediate trading.

https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/our-accounts/fund-my-account#tab_2

My friend opened new TD Ameritrade account last week. He opened the account and then wired the money the same day. It showed up on his TD Ameritrade account immediately and he was able to trade the same day.

 

[snoopy7548]

You should be OK. Just give it a few business days before you panic, especially considering this is a holiday weekend.

I was stupid and wired my payment to Carmax when I bought my car last year. I thought it would be instantaneous, as I initiated the transfer via my bank's website around 3p.m. EST (before the cutoff) on a Thursday. But after waiting there for a few hours without them receiving the transfer, I had to drive my old car back home.

Friday went by, nothing. Saturday went by, nothing. On Monday I called my bank to confirm the transfer went through (it did), and I ended up getting in touch with Carmax's bank and confirming that the account number I wired to was correct. I called Carmax, "nope, still nothing." Called them Tuesday morning, nothing.

They finally called me Tuesday afternoon and said they received the transfer, which was a huge relief! Lesson learned - don't wire money when you're buying a car, just go to the bank and get a goddamn cashier's check.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

You should be OK. Just give it a few business days before you panic, especially considering this is a holiday weekend.

I was stupid and wired my payment to Carmax when I bought my car last year. I thought it would be instantaneous, as I initiated the transfer via my bank's website around 3p.m. EST (before the cutoff) on a Thursday. But after waiting there for a few hours without them receiving the transfer, I had to drive my old car back home.

Friday went by, nothing. Saturday went by, nothing. On Monday I called my bank to confirm the transfer went through (it did), and I ended up getting in touch with Carmax's bank and confirming that the account number I wired to was correct. I called Carmax, "nope, still nothing." Called them Tuesday morning, nothing.

They finally called me Tuesday afternoon and said they received the transfer, which was a huge relief! Lesson learned - don't wire money when you're buying a car, just go to the bank and get a goddamn cashier's check.

.... And this is the reason people still get paid big bucks to program COBOL for fockin' old ass banking programs.

 

[Muse]

You should be OK. Just give it a few business days before you panic, especially considering this is a holiday weekend.

I was stupid and wired my payment to Carmax when I bought my car last year. I thought it would be instantaneous, as I initiated the transfer via my bank's website around 3p.m. EST (before the cutoff) on a Thursday. But after waiting there for a few hours without them receiving the transfer, I had to drive my old car back home.

Friday went by, nothing. Saturday went by, nothing. On Monday I called my bank to confirm the transfer went through (it did), and I ended up getting in touch with Carmax's bank and confirming that the account number I wired to was correct. I called Carmax, "nope, still nothing." Called them Tuesday morning, nothing.

They finally called me Tuesday afternoon and said they received the transfer, which was a huge relief! Lesson learned - don't wire money when you're buying a car, just go to the bank and get a goddamn cashier's check.

I think you are very right, I shouldn't get frantic. TBH, I totally lost my appetite today thinking I'm out all that money maybe. I called ETrade again and talking to a nice guy and thought to ask him after a while if there was someone in the organization he could hook me up with who knows more about these things and he hooked me up with a manager type who I just talked to for about an hour. He said wire transfers are handled by the Federal Reserve, and they're shut down for the weekend. He thinks they will handle it on Monday and that then both institutions will have the info, tracking numbers included.

He was super helpful. He was working from home. We just talked and talked. We did a screen share and he showed me a lot of stuff on ETrade's website, helped me configure my account, showed me how to trade, where to find various features. I've never gotten such personal treatment from a brokerage.

My question was why Marcus would show the funds as being gone already even though they hadn't gotten the info from the Fed. He thinks they just pushed it out when they got the order. I hope it plays out like this. I wish I'd done this during the week and not on a holiday weekend. That's the worst time to do anything where there's much chance something significant will go wrong.

 

[Muse]

What time did you do the wire transfer to Etrade? Did you do it after 6 PM Eastern Standard time? If so, it will show up the next business day which will be Monday. If you did it before, then the money should've shown up in your account yesterday available for immediate trading.

https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/our-accounts/fund-my-account#tab_2

My friend opened new TD Ameritrade account last week. He opened the account and then wired the money the same day. It showed up on his TD Ameritrade account immediately and he was able to trade the same day.

The first of the two wire transfers I set up Friday morning is the problem one and I called Marcus and got the ball rolling about 9AM PDT, so noon eastern. The other wire transfer succeeded, and it was from Synchrony Bank to ETrade, and I got the ball rolling on that maybe 30-60 minutes later. Maybe Marcus was slow somehow and didn't get the info to the Federal Reserve in time for it to go through yesterday (Friday). That was the idea of the manager I talked to an hour ago at ETrade. He said most people are working from home now, including the Federal Reserve, and that contributes to things not going as planned and expected.

It may seem silly but my thinking in wanting to facilitate the funds transfers and being able to invest the funds ASAP, as it were, is just that I have a trading plan with buy and sell signals. Those don't happen frequently, probably less than yearly. Pretty silly if it's risky, but didn't think this was risky. But this is an education. I looked up wire fraud this afternoon. It can happen, but it usually involves some shady activity, i.e. you're wiring money to someone you don't know or who scams you into believing something. In general unless you're sure, you should not wire money. Now, I think I'm probably OK here. There's some chance I am victim of an inside job or some sophisticated scam, but it seems pretty unlikely. Still, the circumstances, in particular for me, not knowing the nuts and bolts of this and having experience, have been unnerving. I think if I had to do it again, I'd maybe try to have a firmer grip on what was going on. Be sure of who I'm talking to, have names. Just be as conscious as possible when doing something like this. And for god's sake, don't do it on a holiday weekend!

.... And this is the reason people still get paid big bucks to program COBOL for fockin' old ass banking programs.

I did a Y2K application upgrade in FoxPro for one of the companies I was working for back then. I did not make big bucks, though. However, I was their only programmer, IIRC.

What time did you do the wire transfer to Etrade? Did you do it after 6 PM Eastern Standard time? If so, it will show up the next business day which will be Monday. If you did it before, then the money should've shown up in your account yesterday available for immediate trading.

https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/our-accounts/fund-my-account#tab_2

The routing number I gave the guy on the phone is the same as the one on that form. However, how do I know he wasn't a scammer? Only proof is that at the bank it says the money went to ETrade. I suppose that's pretty convincing. It's just in limbo because of the weekend.

I could use a vacation... a trek to national parks (almost done watching Ken Burns' series). I've been stuck in the house since middle March. My town is exploding right now with cherry bombs! It's actually been going on for a week or two, just more intense right now. Saw a story on TV tonight (short) people saying a camper with amenities is the way to go in the pandemic... built in social distancing and you still get to roam.

 

[Jgtdragon]

You gave the routing number to someone over the phone? Why didn't you do it on the bank's website? They should have wiring service. I think everything should be ok, but I just don't trust anyone over the phone with wiring.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I honestly don't know of a way to wire other than over the phone. My bank is submission with a PDF doc, which is essentially the same thing.

 

[Muse]

I honestly don't know of a way to wire other than over the phone. My bank is submission with a PDF doc, which is essentially the same thing.

One of my banks in town (I have two) will wire money online for a $20 charge. I believe there's a limit, maybe $100,000, something like that. If you go in person, they will let you wire any amount and the charge is $15. Union Bank of California. I was very seriously considering that, but decided to do everything remotely... the pandemic and all.

 

[Muse]

You gave the routing number to someone over the phone? Why didn't you do it on the bank's website? They should have wiring service. I think everything should be ok, but I just don't trust anyone over the phone with wiring.

I agree, that would be way better. I just didn't realize it was possible. Even though I'd heard that my local B&M bank had online wiring. I forgot.

I had never wired money before, I was totally a newbie in it. I called Marcus and they hooked me up with a specialist. Yes, I would have felt more comfortable with an online system without interacting with a person.

 

[Muse]

Just checked and the 240K showed up in my ETrade account. I'd first checked at the _from_ account, Marcus and it still doesn't show the tracking data, which is strange. It seems to me that the funds should have been registered as still having been sitting in the Macus account over the weekend (and earning interest). I presume it was not. Now, if the funds were officially in the hands of the Federal Reserve (quite possible) I may have no argument. I don't know exactly how this stuff works. I will give Marcus a call and complain about all these issues. By now, the wire tracking info should certainly be displayed there, the ETrade manager I talked to Saturday night thought that should probably register to my account on an automatic basis once the Fed processes the wire.

 

[ponyo]

Great to hear everything worked out!

 

[Muse]

Great to hear everything worked out!

I called Marcus and got a rep. She said the way I did it is the proper way, they don't have an online form to process wire transfers. She recited to me the IMAD number for the wire. It just doesn't show up in my Marcus account, they evidently don't support showing the IMAD number, which seems strange (ETrade told me it should). Well, what did show was the "TO" party, which said ETrade Bank. That and the assurance I got from that extremely accommodating and helpful ETrade manager Saturday night (around 11PM his time in Atlanta) relieved my stress 90%. Previous to that I totally lost my appetite!

Strangely, I don't see the IMAD number at ETrade, but the account is funded.

 

[Muse]

You gave the routing number to someone over the phone? Why didn't you do it on the bank's website? They should have wiring service. I think everything should be ok, but I just don't trust anyone over the phone with wiring.

Yeah, Marcus at Goldman Sachs online savings does not have an online form for wiring money. You need to do it by talking to them over the phone. I hope if I do this again I avoid holidays and weekends like the plague! The age of plagues has NOT passed!