Lost in (Cyber) Space

When we were selling our little CRV we discovered how difficult it could be to move money across international borders. For the car, our buyer was American and he had wanted to send a bank draft to us. It was easy on his end, but on the Grenadian end it would not clear our bank for six weeks! We would have been home by then. Thank goodness for Mrs. Douglas, whose husband works for the Republic Bank, she told me to try a wire transfer. That worked really well and we had our money within days.

When deciding how to get our money from the sale of the vehicle back to Canada there were numerous reasons we thought it unwise to get bank drafts or cash and try and bring the money through Trinidad or Canada customs.

While Grenada is not a "hot spot" for drug trafficking the region is and $9,000 would raise eyebrows. So we opted to close our account and wire the money back to Canada. We did this the Friday before we left and it was supposed to be in our account on Monday.

The trouble started because our "home" account is still in Carleton Place, but the bank we do business with is in Brighton where we live. Unfortunately the transit numbers are very similar. Brighton is 182 and Carleton Place is something like 812... you see where this is going. So the money was supposed to go to 812 account 123456 instead it went to 182 account 123456. Which, if that account actually existed in Brighton, would have been fine- Brighton would have removed it from the wrong account and put it into the right account. The problem? The account doesn't exist in Brighton and the money was "deposited" into the non-existent account- ergo it has vanished.

So Royal Bank Canada confirmed they did have it (past tense), Brighton can confirm they don't and Carleton Place doesn't even know there is a problem.

Next problem, in order to fix the error RBC somehow found the money and returned it to our closed account in Grenada. So the question becomes how do you take money out of an account that doesn't exist and put money into another account that doesn't exist? Hmmmm.

RBC Brighton is being awesome after having to deal with a call-centre who wanted us to call Grenada and sort it out... only we don't have an account with the Royal Bank Trinidad & Tobago anymore so not sure what that call would have been like.

The latest news is first thing Monday morning Brent and the RBC manager are calling Grenada and trying to sort it out! The good news is everyone agrees we have the money and it should be deposited into our account, just making that happen has been way more difficult than we ever expected.