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What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

moderntreasury.com

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Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#181

Post by js2 »

patio11 wrote: post #173
js2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is pull a totally different process? I’ve noticed for pull you have to authenticate the account (usually) with the “verify the two small deposits” dance while push will sometimes let you skip that. In fact, I just called Citi earlier today because I’d closed a CC with them and had a credit. The CS rep asked for my routing and acct number and without even verifying it with me immediately said “you’ll see the credit in…

If you don’t get the money you’ll call up Citibank again to complain and they’ll take the hit to their operational losses budget [0], which happens infrequently as a percentage of transactions but quite frequently over the totality of the system. That’s what the budget is for. [0] Contingent on the transaction going through and not being reversible, which can happen for many reasons (staleness by the time you report…

> If you don’t get the money you’ll call up Citibank again to complain

I hope not. You can't imagine how annoying it is to get them on the phone. Well actually, you of all people probably know exactly how annoying it is. But I'll recap it anyway. First, when you login to the web site to access your closed account to check the statement, the 1-800 number displayed is for card activation only. Go to main web site, dig up correct number. None of the usual tricks (wait in silence, try 0, try 9, ask for an operator, ask for customer service) will bypass they infernal voice response system. Even "close account" is automated now. I guess they don't care about retention.

While I'm griping, the account has been closed for more than 90 days. Are they required at any point to send me a check?

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#182

Post by mattmcknight »

Symbiote wrote: post #118
itcrowd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I pay all my bills by bank transfer (house, electric, internet, settlements with friends etc). It's the most common payment method here (I'm in Europe). PayPal et al are barely used here because the bank transfer system is free and frictionless.

I'm guessing, but I think most people probably give the electric company permission to pull the money from their account (direct debit) rather than reviewing the bill and "pushing" the money every time. There are very strong guarantees in the individual's favour if the company makes a mistake.

Yes, having them control the amount and timing of the transfer is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I can easily set up direct debit, but it has led to too many erroneous and poorly timed withdrawals.

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#183

Post by Qworg »

thepinkelefant wrote: post #169
Qworg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle is roughly real time. It is owned by the same company doing RTP.

Not correct . RTP is from theclearinghouse and Zelle is from clearexchange. Zelle came from a mix of banks trying to address only P2P scenarios. RTP goes beyond to B2C and all other combinations .

Zelle is owned by Early Warning Systems, a wholely owned subsidiary of the top 7 banks in the US. The Clearing House is a joint venture by the top 25 banks in the US.

Clearexchange was purchased by EWS a few years ago.

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#184

Post by __s »

teilo wrote: post #11

Ah, NACHA, oh how I hate thee. If only NACHA files were JSON as shown in the example in the article. I wrote a NACHA processor in MS Access many years ago for a client in the insurance industry. That thing is still being used. God, I wish it would die. Although, I'm not sure which is worse: Parsing and generating the NACHA record format, or trying to parse and generate JSON in VBA. Why MS Access? Their entire claims…

My previous job involved MS Access for insurance too, this in Canada. We got them to use SQL Server as a backend for most of the databases at least, so I could build infrastructure for reporting off the SQL. But all the data entry & quite a few reports were built into Access UIs. Quite a few places where we had to shunt table valued functions into Access to output into Excel

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#185

Post by thewhitetulip »

itcrowd wrote: post #12

This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…

India launched UPI payments method. Everyone who downloaded the UPI app has an address like email and can send money to each other. Money goes into bank account directly! And it's free.

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#186

Post by Thorrez »

teilo wrote: post #11

Ah, NACHA, oh how I hate thee. If only NACHA files were JSON as shown in the example in the article. I wrote a NACHA processor in MS Access many years ago for a client in the insurance industry. That thing is still being used. God, I wish it would die. Although, I'm not sure which is worse: Parsing and generating the NACHA record format, or trying to parse and generate JSON in VBA. Why MS Access? Their entire claims…

I wrote an ACH generator in Thoroughbred Script-IV[1] as an intern. It was pretty funny when my malformed ACH file generated $1 out of thin air (the bank took the dollar back a few days later). Trying to do JSON in Script-IV would have been quite a challenge.

One thing I remember was I think there were 3 different places in the ACH file to insert company name, and they were fixed length, each with a different length. I had a list of companies to support, so for each company, I carefully created 3 different abbreviated names for it, one for each length, applying more extreme abbreviation strategies for the shorter lengths.

[1] http://www.thoroughbredsoftware.com/reference/DOCUMENTATION/...

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#187

Post by s9w »

teraflop wrote: post #80
eganist wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's your expectations that are out of whack. Not every article needs to explain everything as if the reader is completely unfamiliar with the topic being discussed. Oof. User s9w appears to be German. ACH is a USA construct. The closest analog would be PE-ACHes for SEPA, of which OP might be familiar. Without context and operating from a localized search zone, googling ACH may render results irrelevant to…

I certainly didn't intend it as a personal criticism, and if it came across that way I'm sorry! There's nothing wrong with not knowing what ACH is and asking about it. But conversely, there's also nothing wrong with writing an article about ACH that doesn't bother to explain the background in detail, nor is there anything wrong with posting such an article to HN. The only thing I take issue with is the suggestion tha…

Just for the record: I obviously could have googled it. But although I'm German, I spend a good amount of time in the "American internet" - and never heart of ACH. Plus the submission was upvoted like crazy. So I was pretty confident that this was either spam or I'm having a brainfart.

It seems though that there are things like ACH that are somehow very common knowledge but I've never come across until now.

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#188

Post by killjoywashere »

The Social Security Administration's Death Index and Death Master File are a great resource. Too bad they make it such a pain to get.

The US military keeps its own death file for its beneficiary population (all members of the military, retirees, and their dependents). I have been told (not surprisingly) that there are disagreements between the various authorities on who exactly is dead.

So, even if you get an R15 and the bank tells you they certified the death against the SSA's MDF, they may only be mostly dead.

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#189

Post by pbreit »

patio11 wrote: post #175
pbreit wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks do realize that paying 1% to speed up a transfer by 1-2 days is equivalent to a 180%-365% interest loan?

In many cases they’ll be paying 1% of e.g. $40 either to avoid having to think about this any more or because they have extremely toothy consequences to not having the cash today. e.g. The implicit interest rate on an NSF fee if they don’t fund the $10 overdraft currently happening on their checking account due to the rent check being deposited, which they have 3 hours to cover before the cutoff, is on the order of 3…

My sense is that's the vast minority.

I think most of the % fee-based "instant withdrawals" are done without understanding the effective APR. "It's only 1%!"

Re: What Happens When You ACH a Dead Person?

#190

Post by squirrelicus »

itcrowd wrote: post #12

This reminds me of a question I've had for the longest time (+): why is it that in the US wiring money between accounts is so expensive or difficult? Whole ecosystems of companies have sprung up (PayPal and Stripe come to mind, and apps such as TransferWise) to reduce the friction when the banks could easily set up a way cheaper system that would actually be better (privacy etc.) for the consumer. The EU seems to be…

Electricity costs for the 70s mainframes running COBOL probably. Only half tongue in cheek.
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