I know there are a number of Bankers out there on the EF, just wondering if you could advise me:

About a month ago I sent CHF 9000 to the UK to more or less pay off my Natwest VISA. I heard nothing for 2 weeks, and then the money re-appeared back in my ZKB account, with the explanation that the transfer had been rejected because of irregularities in the address entry on the transfer request form. The Natwest VISA company operates from a PO Box address in Southend on Sea, no street name is given, and this obviously caused some problems.

My main problem was that the money came back minus 400 CHF! For some reason that no-one can explain, the funds were converted into Euros, and then back again when they were returned, except that the amount returned was seriously deficient.

I called Natwest VISA, who said that it was the work of an intermediary bank, they claimed they did not know who it was, and said that the ZKB should know. Predictably, the ZKB said the same thing, but told me I should contact Natwest VISA. Someone is lying, and I certainly did not sign up to the concept that an incorrectly entered address would cost me CHF 400!

All and any advice would be greatly welcome.

Cheers

Jim

No idea what you can do, I'm afraid, but I'd put money on it being NatWest at fault. I had a standing order from my First Direct account into a NatWest account that worked for 5 years, before suddenly being bounced back - by NatWest. We never did find the reason...

It could be that, seeing as the funds actually left your account here to go via a another bank, that there was a fluctuation in the exchange rate when it was refunded. A difference of 10 rappen at the moment would I think be around 400 chufs if it was going in the right way (or wrong way for you)

Of course they do know. You presumably sent GBP to settle your card debt, so the banks involved are a) ZKB's GBP depository and b) Natwest's GBP depository - and they both know who is a) and b)....

Hi Jim,

I had a similar problem in reverse a few years ago. A client of mine in the UK transferred money to pay a very substantial invoice I had sent him. Like you the money went AWOL for a few days and then turned up back in his account, less costs! He got the same story, there was a problem with the address.

After careful checking I discovered the problem, my bank account uses the full street name (strasse), while the invoice uses the short form (str). I was told by the bank that the money arrived in Switzerland, but it was rejected by the international payment system, because of the address issue!!!!

Good luck with that,

Jim

For the last year I have been using the IBAN system - should go direct to the correct bank. For the Bank of Scotland it seems to be fine and quick (less than 24 hours).
Think you just need a couple of international clearing numbers from the receiving bank and it is virtually seamless (in my limited experience)

Agree with other posters. If you sent by TT then ZKB and Natwest would've used a correspondent bank and they are usually standard for each currency, each country. So Shorrick's right, they know who their agent is alright and just have to check.
Somewhere there will be a full paper trail which can be followed because all TTs have a unique identifying reference for tracking purposes. It's a bit of a hassle for someone do the checking which explains why they try to fob you off but it's all there.
I agree with Grumpygrapefruit - a big slug of the CHF 400 could be FX movement. You don't give dates but there was a big sell off in GBP between April 17 to April 24. I'm just looking at screen rates (God knows what rates you got) but GBP fell from 1.73 to 1.67. That's nearly a 3.5% move and on 9000chf would account for -315chf if you were unlucky enough to hit the peaks and troughs. Then there's the handling fees for ZKB and the correspondent banks even though the payment failed.
Did you supply IBAN numbers and BIC/Swift codes for the payee account? If so the payment shouldn't have failed. If not, I'm surprised ZKB didn't advise you the payment might fail without an address.
So check the FX dates and rates and ask ZKB, in writing, for a full explanation, including costs and FX rates. I would focus on ZKB. They were the transferring bank. Natwest didn't receive the cash so they will stonewall rather than hassle their correspondent bank for a payment they didn't get.
I don't know what ZKB's terms and conditions are for TTs but they're usually one sided and banks usually exclude liability for their correspondent banks and warn of payees liability for FX movement in event of a failed payment. You might want to ask ZKB for a copy of theirs.

Just had another thought Jim. If your TT was to clear a credit card balance then you probably made an "in full payment" which means the fees would not be deducted from the payment otherwise the balance wouldn't be fully paid off. With this type of TT you usually authorise your bank to charge the fees direct to your account. So it's worth checking your bank statements because you may find this TT cost you more than CHF400.

Thanks for all the replies, I reckon the biggest mystery is why the funds were converted to Euros and back? I don't understand why a transfer to the UK went through an intermediate Euro stage (and back). I also think that the Euro appreciated against the CHF in this period.

Cheers

Jim

You mean it went CHF - Euro- GBP and back? That sounds very odd to me too.

I had a similar problem a few years ago sending some money to Switzerland from the UK. We arranged for a transfer between Woolwich bank (now barclays) and a post finance account here. They charged us £35 for the transfer and told us it could take up to 5 working days. Ok we thought went ahead. After two weeks and the money not appearing and making complaints. We were told that they did not know where the money was. All they could do was put out a trace messages in the transfer system to see who had our money. In the end it took a month to reappear minus around £50. We were told that the exchange rate did that. They eventually agreed to refund us the £35 fee. The reason we believe it failed was that on checking the details with customer service they had input one of the bank details wrong. Although they refused to admit it.

What we did in the mean time was use western union and had someone pick up the money this end and pay it into the account. It took less than a day, but cost another £38.

In all a very frustrating experience. Since then we have done other online transfers from other banks online using IBAN numbers etc and that works really well no more than a day or two delay.

Is it still possible to order a bankers draft these days and could this be used for international payments? I remember this was quite an easy (and cheap!) method of paying large sums of cash if above the value of a personal cheque.

IBAN is definitely the way to go to avoid these silly little address hassles. However, get one digit wrong on the IBAN and back to hassle and if you are unlucky more charges for resending.

No sh!t! You're telling me...

Jim

I had a similar problem with NatWest recently. They bounced a direct debit to pay my NatWest credit card. It had been in place for years. But when I used the card recently, the bill - for a small amount - was not paid. NWB issued a series of nasty letters and levied charges. It took lot of calls to sort out. They did recognise it was their fault and made it right but I won't be using the card again in a hurry.

Can't be worse than a bank teller in Australia who sent some fundraising money that was supposed to go to Niger (west Africa)...to Nigeria!

The money came back minus the loss in bank charges and exchange rates...we were not impressed!...but some would say we should be just glad we got most of our money back...

The CHF-EUR-GBP dodginess might be worth notifying http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/ about. Maybe its all above board but you at least deserve an explanation from NatWest.

My dad tried to transfer a pile of cash to me, and the bank teller at Lloyds wrote the destination address as ..... Zurich, Sweden.
Fortunately someone did wonder why an Englishman wanted to send an amount of Swiss Francs to Sweden, and the transaction gathered dust in a "To Do" box for 4.5 weeks until he went in and asked wtf. is going on?!!

Cheers

Jim

Thanks for all the advice guys. Just to keep you up to speed, the ZKB were very helpful, giving us a print-out of where the money went. The money was indeed lost through exchange rate fluctuations. They obtained all this information from Natwest, who had denied all knowledge!!

Most interestingly, they informed us that Natwest had given us an IBAN that was only valid for Euros. I am absolutely spitting! Essentially this means that any transactions I have made to the VISA card have gone CHF -> Euro -> GBP. Any suggestions on how to deal with Natwest over this? There must be a way to get some compensation for this incompetence.

Others might want to check that this is not also happening to them..

Cheers

Jim

Jim,
Do have anything in writing evidencing your request for an IBAN and their reply?