Yup. Spent the first two years of my professional career being overpaid. They grabbed that money back within a day of the audit (which I had to ask for).
Was owed money as part of a business trip.
Didn’t see a dime for months.
Fuck banks, find a credit union
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You just said the exact same thing as op but in 400 more words.
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In this thread: People who work for banks or tangential industries telling people ‘That is just how it works’ and ignoring the fact that it only works that way because the banks have chosen the path of maximum returns and least convenience for their customers.
“it is policy” is the modern version of “Natural Law” It is a thought-ending cliche.
All of you defending this need to step back for a second and ask yourself how much of your life is controlled by policy and ‘it is what it is’ at your own expense and to the profit of the leech class.
Also “this is how it works (in the US)” and, as always, forgetting the rest of the world exists and works differently. EU has done several things lately to speed up things like this, and it’s been better than what’s written here for many years/decades.
Reading almost anything about the US as a European never stops being like hearing about how we used to have it 30 years ago.
BUSINESS days. Motherfucker, EVERY day is a business day.
Next time a place tells me that the refund is going to take a week. I’m going to say okay, give me the item and I’ll bring it back in a week as soon as the refund goes through.
They don’t instantly take your money. It’s instantly made unavailable to you, but it’s still held by your bank for a bit before they receive it.
When they refund money to you, it’s instantly unavailable to them, but is still held by their bank a bit before you receive it.
So it’s banks stealing from both sides.
Yes, but it’s also a coordintion thing.
Banks, businesses, and payment processors have to coordinate billions of payments a day and it’s easier to do occasional reconciliation followed by an adjuted transfer for the net difference instead of a ton of individual transfers, most of which cancel each other out.
Sure but it’s their choice to do reconciliation once daily instead of hourly
It’s how they always come out on top.
Was coming in to say this say this as well. I worked at a bank as an IT guy, I managed SWIFT payments. This is indeed the exact thing that happens.
The entirety of modern banking is predatory pieces of shit doing nothing but using us.
Our banks could front the money to us with virtually zero risk, because the funds are coming back through the system from other banks. They just want to keep it on the books as long as is legal to earn interest.
If you want to change this, you need to vote for people who are not in bed with the banks. That means no incumbents, and especially no Republican incumbents. No, not all politicians are corrupt, but nearly all of them are, term limits for Congress would help mitigate this, certainly better than no term limits.
Lots of comments in this thread that are splitting the details. Which , fine. The underlying issue that is being broadly gestured to is consumer protection vs. corporate protections - or even more broadly just the double standards of rights for organizations vs. people ; look at the LLM piracy that occurred vs. individuals that get caught pirating. Look at the harm against children fee that meta is paying vs what happens to individuals that harm children. With consolidation of power/money consumer choice goes down and with consolidation of wealth corruption goes up leading to less choice w/less protections.
Not to defend corporations and banks, but it’s kinda true. When you swipe your debit card, your bank allocates those funds for that transaction, but whoever you’re paying doesn’t actually have it yet, and your bank hasn’t sent it yet. That’s just the way the banking system works. It can take days for them to actually get your money, depending on weekends, holidays, etc. When you request a refund, the process just goes in reverse.
Think of it like a check. If I write a check and give it to someone, I write the amount in the check register as if it’s spent, but until that person takes my check to the bank, they don’t actually have the money yet.
I’ve worked for multiple different financial institutions. I’ve been on the banker side and the consumer side of the industry and I can assure you banks absolutely do have the ability to send your money back instantly.
While there are certain federal and international laws that could impact transfer times, this is rare and not something your average Joe would run into.
Most banks want to hold onto your money for as long as possible because that’s how they earn their money. And banks aren’t the only ones who do this. Companies will hold out on issuing refunds for the same reason.
It’s sort of the perfect way to show the penny savings example I guess. Because yeah, the interested earned is pennies, but when you have a million pennies earning another million pennies… it adds up.
[EDITED: to changed an autocorrect from warned to earned]
I deposited a large check once — nothing that would get the attention of the IRS or anything, other than that I’m normally poor — to a regular national bank. They held it for about two weeks to “verify” it, aka invest and profit off it, so I immediately went over to the local credit union (who doesn’t do shit like that) and opened an account there. Got a good chunk of it transferred with little-to-no fuss and closed out my bank account with a middle finger.
In Europe there’s a system called SEPA, which is a network that allows instant transfer of funds. Right now, by law, banks are required to allow consumers to use SEPA at the same conditions as the regular old bank transfer, which means I could send you money right now for free and you could receive it instantly anywhere in the EU.
The technology exists. Banks just have no incentive on implementing it
Warning, Pedantry Ahead: Regular SEPA is maximum 1 business day - that’s what’s currently mandated by law in the whole SEPA area.
SEPA Instant is what you’re describing - that’s only mandatory for banks /in the Euro area/, not all of Europe. (That said, our local banks here in Romania at least have offered instant payments in local currency for donkeys’ as well.) Apparently SEPA Instant will be mandatory for whole SEPA area from next year.
(Full disclosure - edited above because I didn’t realise SEPA-Instant was now mandatory in the Euro area since last year.)
As you say though, the technology absolutely exists. And not just within the SEPA area; I also have accounts in Thailand and China - a transfer from my Romanian account to my Thai account is literally instantaneous (it’s not unusual to get the “you have received…” popup from my Thai banking app before the “you have sent…” popup,) and to my Chinese account takes 5 minutes, tops - 7 days/week. The idea of having to wait days - let alone business days - for a payment to clear is just wild “let’s take a time machine back 30 years” stuff.
(I mean… Cheques! Seriously. They still use cheques… shakes head.)
I can assure you banks absolutely do have the ability to send your money back instantly.
USAA does this for certain refunds, but they take on a bit of risk to do so. They make the funds available to spend before they’ve actually been settled
That’s interesting, I’m not familiar with their practices specifically but that is interesting!
This avoids OP’s point. When you get charged, the charges appear instantly, sure it might not be fully verified.
But when you get a refund, it does not appear instantly. There is absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t.
Also, I’m always very annoyed that banking apps can’t do a simple and proper summary in which verified and unverified transactions just appear normally with a little tag and the total charges just adds those up.
It’s just simple math and accounting, idk why they have to make the interface painful. Regardless of what the status of the transaction is, it’s verification status should be a label, not make it appear in purgatory only to disappear for a day to finally show up.
I think you’re missing a point. Person A spends X dollars at person B’s store. Person A immediately sees X dollars reduced from their bank account, and it shows as pending. Person B does NOT immediately see X dollars added to their account. For some duration, that money is just on hold while the bank verifies and processes the payment. Meanwhile Person A gets whatever they bought for X dollars on the promise and expectation that the bank will soon pass along that payment. Person B may not actually retrieve that money for several days, though.
Now Person A comes back for a refund, so Person B submits that refund back to them. The exact same process happens in reverse with the bank. Depending on the company, there may be an extra internal accounting/fraud review process for the business before the refund is actually submitted to the bank, which adds more time. But whether it does or doesn’t, the time it takes for that money to transfer between accounts is entirely out of the business’ control.
My family owns and run multiple retail fireworks stores, and I work in sales data for a major retail chain. I have personally handled many times when someone got overcharged for their transaction, like if an item got scanned twice by mistake. We immediately run a refund for the over charge in such cases. We are not delaying it at all. It still takes days to hit their account again, though. It has nothing to do with us or our processor how long that takes. If you have a problem with it, talk to your bank. They are choosing not to front you the money we refunded. It is already gone from our account, and is sitting in pending state.
I agree completely; I often do credit card refunds and that can take me a minute on my end, but your own bank might not release your funds back to you for days or weeks.
I know it can be weeks because I had to check in with the same customer a few times to confirm that their bank was being the problem rather the payment processor we had.
I worked in retail for 15 years, and this came up all the time. Yes, your money has been “accessed” in your account, but if I run my journal and show it to you, you would see we don’t actually have it yet.
Wouldn’t this create inflation… all that money “in transit?”
Only one party can access it at a time, so I don’t see how it could.
Plus someone always has the money.
What often happens is that your bank is making a profit on the interest off of your money for a few days, which is the reason they delay giving the money back to you right away.
“That’s just the way the system works” say people who built, maintain, and rely on the system working that way for their profit.
Yeah, not true in the EU. Money must reach the recipient within seconds.
But it’s the same thing. The banks just front the money essentially. The actual transaction doesn’t clear until later.
Nope. SEPA SCT clears in 1 day. SEPA SCT-Inst (already mandatory in Euro area, mandatory in rest of SEPA area from next year) clears in 10 seconds.
If they use SEPA, it’s settled instantly.
Then they can do that the other way as well
Seems like a good job for a bank, and something reasonable they could do in other countries too.
You got any source for that? From what I read they settle it immediately.
Some places clear all their receipts on a weekly basis, not daily and definitely not hourly. I think for smaller restaurants and stores they pay lower transaction fees for handling it in bulk.
Are you aware weeks are only 7 days, not…17?
To be fair, 1 1⁄7 of a week is slightly over half a week.
What really astounds me is that somehow the receiving bank actually knows instantly when a refund is on it’s way.
I have a Revolut bank account and recently I went to a shop to return an item. Less than ten seconds after the cashier issued the refund I got a notification from Revolut: a refund is on it’s way.
Of course the money was not there instantly but the amount was already listed in the transactions (greyed out until the money is actually there)
I never had this with any other banking app and always had to check regularly if the money has arrived.
I love Revolut for this and many other features that other banks simply won’t put into their apps.
I have this with a Spanish bank and their app; every time I get refunded, whether it’s an internet purchase or to my card, I get a notification instantly. Same with charges or transfers, nothing ever happens without me knowing instantly. Really nice.
They didn’t take the money in 2 seconds though. That’s why it shows as a “pending” transaction.
Depends. Some take it in 2 seconds, some don’t. Transfers take milliseconds either way in SEPA.
And the US built something similar, fully funded it’s creation, and then it all got thrown away at the last second by Trump because the corrupt banks like profiting off of the old system.
Sepa?
Southeast Pennsylvania. All financial transactions have to go through there.
It’s because of the Pennsylvania Dutch isn’t it? It’s always the Dutch in the end.
Single euro payment area
Ah I’d never heard of that because Tony Blair used up his polical capital joining an illegal war with the Americans rather than the single market with our neighbours.
I’ve been waiting since June! Broke my phone, Samsung’s website glitched while I was paying the $99 insurance fee to get it replaced, so they took my money and never created the repair order. So I’ve been fighting with both Samsung and my bank for three months now; they still have my $99, and my phone is still broken.
I wish I could afford a lawyer.
Why would you need a lawyer?
Thats small claims court. No lawyer needed.
