2021-10-29 E*Trade wire transfers take longer than you think

E*Trade wire transfers take longer than you think

We filled out an E*Trade wire request form, and submitted that online before noon ET on 2021-10-27. See case number 22924301094881. The message center shows the date, but no time stamp. That should be fixed. The online submission was a color .pdf file containing 1460945 bytes.

The wire request form says "TIMING: Generally, if your wire request is received by E*TRADE before 12 p.m. ET, it will be sent within one business day. If your request is received after 12 p.m. ET, the wire will be sent within two business days."

That is ambiguous. If the request is submitted before noon, does "within one business day" mean the day the request was submitted, or the next day?

On 2021-10-27 at 10:49 ET, I asked via chat about the timing, and Travis B. said "Yes it will go out today".

On 2021-10-27 at 19:20 ET, I asked via chat about the status. Forrest B. said "It is in queue and set to go out tomorrow." I don't know what queue he was looking at, but that was clearly incorrect.

On 2021-10-28 at 16:48 ET, I asked via chat for an update, since the transfer had not yet happened. Jaeyun J. transfered this to a phone call, and I spoke to Jeff Squire.

He claimed the transfer had been rejected for multiple reasons:

• Black and white license, even though the .pdf clearly shows color.
• Apparently the license was very slightly trimmed on the left side. There is an undocumented requirement that the license photo must show all four corners.
• The address cannot be a PO box.

In any case, Jeff was great. He went thru all the steps, and created the actual wire transfer while I was on the phone. He assured me that it would happen on the morning of 2021-10-29.

So, three separate reasons for the transfer to be rejected, yet the message center and the chat operators all thought everything was fine as of 2021-10-27 at 19:20 ET. Note that as of 2021-10-29, the message center still does not have any indication that there was anything wrong with that transfer request. So, exactly when was that transfer rejected, and why was there no notification of that in the message center?

Let's look at each reason individually. Color vs black and white. The details are below - the E*Trade file upload system converted the .pdf to black and white. And they then complain that the license is not in color.

The requirements for the license photo are not documented. The instructions just say "Make a photocopy...". E*Trade should add something like "and ensure that all four corners of the license are clearly visible".

The address cannot be a PO Box. We had done a previous wire transfer using our PO Box as the address. The request form needs to be modified so the contact information part includes "Address (not a PO Box)".

On 2021-10-29 at 15:21 ET, called Elite services at 888-388-2900, spoke to Michael Cardinal. The transfer did not go thru, but he might be looking at the original reasons for the rejection above. He also said there was a missing signature listed as a reason, but confirmed that the .pdf included my signature. No feedback on who thought the signature was missing.

There was yet another approval that should have happened this morning, but did not. Michael got that approved, so the transfer now has a confirmation number 229 243 698 808 81, and it should actually happen in the next hour, before 16:30 ET. I told Michael that I would call back at 16:30 ET if the transfer had not happened by then. Ah, that "confirmation" number is actually an E*Trade internal reference number.

Michael downloaded the E*Trade copy of transfer request pdf. Their copy has a size of 545042 bytes, and is all black and white, including the E*Trade logos on the first three pages. The actual original file that was uploaded is 1460945 bytes and color. Something in the E*Trade file upload system is broken and needs to be fixed.

On 2021-10-29 at 16:30 ET, called Elite services at 888-388-2900, spoke to Trent Anderson. He has no more information, but still thinks the transfer will go thru today. There must be someone at E*Trade that pushes the final button to make the money move, but Trent apparently does not have access to those folks. It is now 17:00 ET. It is unclear why the money did not move in the last 90 minutes.

I gave Trent the URL to this blog post.

Trent is checking with some other team members to get more information on this transfer, and possibly to expedite it. We are now at 17:20 ET. The transfer clearly won't happen today, or over the weekend. The next opportunity will be Monday morning. E*Trade can expect a call from me.

Just to recap, we have had four separate assurances from E*Trade as to when this transfer will happen:

• 2021-10-27 at 10:49 ET - it will go out today.
• 2021-10-27 at 19:20 ET - it will go out tomorrow.
• 2021-10-28 at 19:30 ET - it will go out tomorrow morning.
• 2021-10-29 at 15:30 ET - it will go out before 16:30 ET.

Is it any surprise that I am suspicious of further assurances?