That instant transfer fee of $25 on Zelle almost cost me rent

I needed to send $1,200 to my landlord by 5pm last Friday and my bank's normal transfer takes 3 days. So I used their instant transfer option through Zelle and paid that $25 fee... thought it was worth it for the peace of mind. But the money didn't show up in his account for almost 6 hours and he almost filed a late fee of $60 against me. Turns out my bank had a processing glitch and their support couldn't do anything until Monday. Has anyone else had an urgent bank transfer just go missing at a critical time?

2 comments

2 Comments

thea24625d ago

Wait did your bank not have any kind of warning about the glitch? My friend Sarah had this exact thing happen last month when she was trying to close on her apartment. She paid the $25 fee to send her security deposit and the transfer just vanished for like 8 hours. Her landlord was texting her screenshots of an empty account and she was literally calling the bank crying in the parking lot of a Starbucks. They finally credited her account back but by then the landlord had already sent the late notice to her email. She still got the $60 fee waived but it took three weeks of arguing with the property manager.

reed.eva25d ago

I get where you're coming from and that sounds absolutely awful for your friend. But honestly, I have to push back a little here. Banks are big, slow companies and they're not going to warn you about every possible glitch before you hit send. If I had to wait for my bank to guarantee every transaction would work perfectly before I paid a bill, I'd never get anything done. The real problem is that we rely so heavily on these instant transfers for things like closing on an apartment or paying a security deposit. A 24 hour buffer would have saved your friend all that stress. I think the better lesson is to never trust a same day transfer for something that important unless you have no other choice.