Hey all. I feel like this needs to go in a different thread but I’m not sure which one.
I tried to transfer some money to the US and the bank on this end screwed up the transaction and it got sent back to them. The TW bank said that the US bank assessed a US$50 fee for the failed transaction. My bank in the US told me there’s no fee for failed transactions. They also said that if there was a “failed transaction fee”, I could dispute the fee and it would not be on me to pay it.
I’ve been fighting with this bank in TW to return all my money to me for almost a month now. Not only will they not give me back the US$50 that they claim was assessed for the failed transaction, they also refuse to return the NT$400 that they charged for the transaction attempt and told me that I would have to pay an additional NT$200 on top of that in order to get my money back. Their “proof” of the US$50 fee is a string of text that has “fee: US$50” buried in it that came back to them with the money when they attempted to transfer it. The other three pages of text in the document are meaningless to me. I told them that I need them to show me the bank’s actual fee schedule that says that US$50 is my responsibility and they just keep sending the pages of text that the bank supposedly sent them.
Feeling like I’m being scammed here but they refuse to budge. I’ve got email correspondence as record of their claims. It’s just them repeating themselves and me saying “you need to show me where the US bank said this money will be deducted and that I’m the one who owes that money if they do”. They’re acting like the string of text they keep attaching that says there was a fee is somehow is “proof” when I keep telling them that I need them to show me where the US bank actually says they charge this fee.
In the US, I know the CFPB (if trump/Elon’s little
boys haven’t destroyed it) would come down full force on a bank for trying to scam someone without transparency like this. Who do I contact in Taiwan that has equivalent power? I feel like short of an angry lawyer letter (which will cost me much more than the US$50 + NT$600 that they’re holding hostage), I don’t have any rights here.
I had a similar thing happen to me once and the clerk ended up paying for the failed transaction fee out of her own pocket. Which I didn’t want her to do and I felt bad that she did this, I thought it was going to be the bank reversing the fee
Also SWIFT transfers aren’t the most transparent. I would say that all the Taiwan bank has is the text string as proof of the $50USD. It could have been an intermediary bank that charged the fee rather than your US bank which is going to be hard to track down and I would guess that $50usd is going to be gone without some big escalations
I also got charged this fee for a failed wire transaction from US to TW because bank said company name didn’t completely match when client sent it (not same case I know, but a different bank clerk corrected the name before remittance so it’s possible if they want to help).
I had the same thing happen after 10 years of transfers. They didn’t ask for an additional fee though to get my money, but they did say they also had to pay. It was denied by the intermediary bank which was TD and the official message was something like “do not reply, will not respond” in all caps. I’ve never made a swift transfer since. I started using transfer wise and haven’t encountered any Taiwanese Bank bullshit for a few years. I’ll never go back.
If the recipient’s bank doesn’t accept your transfer, the money will be returned to you. But you might not receive the full amount you originally sent. This is because correspondent fees, and any other charges incurred during the processing of your transfer, will have been deducted.
So I’d guess it’s really not the fault of the bank in Taiwan (unless they messed up the transfer somehow and caused the issue in the first place…).