vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
This was most likely a scam, although I do know of cases where a transfer intended for one company ended up in the bank account of another company. I am not entirely sure what happened afterwards, but I think the receiving company was asked to return the transfer back to the originating account.  Still, even if this was the case, they wouldn't have just abandoned $1k for a simple administration fee (if there was even any). It doesn't sound logical.
"The credit and debit terms here is, talking from bank's point of view (shouldn't be a surprise, banks are never known to look at things from the customers' POV ;)).  In accounting, a liability (loans, owners capital etc) is a credit balance and asset (cash, buildings and such) is a debit balance.  Your account is a liability to the bank (in accounting parlance that is because they owe you every single penny that is there in your account, btw, in literal parlance too if you really make their life harder ;))  So when the bank accepts money from you, they need to increase their asset (cash) which they will debit (higher debit balance for asset means more assets), and at the same time they also have to account for the added liability by ""crediting"" the deposited money into your account. So when bank says they have credited your account, it means you have more money in your account. Now, if you transfer money from your account to another, or make a payment through your account, your account will be debited and the beneficiary account will be credited(bank's liability towards you reduces) More or less what everyone else said here... but hey, I could also take a swipe at banks ;))"
Each bank builds or buys their own bill pay system, so answers are not universal (try your banks bill pay system out before fully transferring over, if I didn't like mine I'd get a new bank), but for your questions in order: Other things to consider include: Check your bank account at least twice a month to verify what payments have been made (this is just good general advice). I use bill pay to automatically pay the minimum payment so I avoid forgetting to pay my credit card bill.  I strongly recommend a push vs. pull method for bill pay; that is, pushing money from your bank account to pay bills, rather than allowing billers to pull money from your account. This limits the number of companies that you directly give your bank account information to, and makes it easier to hold onto your money when you dispute a mistake they made. It also puts all payment information in once central place so you can keep track of all payment schedules together.
I've spoken with a number of expatriates in Canada and Canadian bankers over the past few days.  Here's what I've been able to piece together. This was surprising to me.  As I understand it, the only sure-fire way to wire transfer funds from an arbitrary bank to another arbitrary bank on a different continent on the first try  is by using the IBAN number of the destination account.  IBAN seems to be the only account number format that is anywhere close to a worldwide standard.  If the destination account does not have an IBAN number (like those in Canada and USA), then you rely on a degree of wisdom on the part of the sending bank(er) to format your numbers (account/institution/transit/etc) in such a way that the transfer successfully reaches the destination account. If any given sending bank has not sent funds to another given non-IBAN bank recently, then there is an element of uncertainty as to how the destination account's numbers have to be entered into the sending bank's system.  The de facto practice seems to be to develop the wisdom of what works and what doesn't by attempting to transfer small sums until they succeed.  Then the sending bank uses the exact same method to transfer the large sum as they used for the small sum that succeeded. It seems like there are some things you can do pro-actively increase your odds that a wire transfer to a non-IBAN account will succeed.  Ultimately you want to provide four different pieces of information that are especially important for non-IBAN wire transfers: All of your numbers in all applicable compositions - Wire transfer number formats are often actually multiple fundamental numbers that are concatenated, prefixed, and suffixed.  I suspect that some wire transfer senders actually need to enter the fundamental numbers separately or in different compositions.  Suppose the sending bank needs, for example, the institution identifer.  The ABA routing number does contain, among other things, the institution identifier.  However, you should provide the institution number separately in your wire transfer instructions because the sending bank might need the institution number and will probably have no idea how to extract it from the ABA routing number. For Canada, I think the number you should provide are as follows:
From Chase FAQ it looks like this is a regular ACH transfer. ACH transactions can be reversed under certain conditions. I haven't been able to find some authoritative link on this, so I suggest this (thenest.com budgeting blog) instead: Allowed Reasons You can have ACH transactions reversed for one of three reasons under   the rules: wrong money amount, wrong account or duplicated   transactions. For example, if your mortgage bill is for $756.00, but   your lender's website messes up and you're charged $856.00, the   transaction is reversible it because it's the wrong dollar amount. If   the website charges you $756.00 twice, the second duplicated   transaction is reversible. Reversal Procedures You might have to bring a mistake to the originator's attention to get   it fixed. Only the originator -- the person or company taking or   sending money -- can ask for a reversal. For example, if you have a   transaction for a wrong dollar amount from your lender's website, the   originator is the lender. An originator is supposed to send the   reversal within 24 hours of the error's discovery and within five   banking days of the original transaction. When a reversal is required   because of a wrong amount or wrong account, the originator must send a   correcting entry with the right information. Bank's Responsibility A bank should honor an ACH reversal, even if it means debiting a   customer's account again because of a correcting transaction. However,   the bank doesn't have to debit your account if you closed it or the   new transaction would overdraw it. Your bank does have to tell you if   a correcting entry is going to take money out of your account, but the   bank doesn't need your permission to do it.
What keshlam said is correct. In bookkeeping terms, what you are doing is transferring value from some kind of cash account (which may in turn be backed by a loan) to an asset. Effectively, you are exchanging one asset for another. That asset you are exchanging to is the land that you are buying, which has some value, and which should end up on the asset side of your balance sheet. Unfortunately, particularly with fixed assets where no two ones are alike, such as land, it's often very hard to know the exact value unless and until you sell it. An appraiser can get you an estimate, but only sealing a deal with an actual buyer can get you an exact value, and at that point, the asset is no longer yours.
You can use xoom.com or western union. They are both pretty much the same, as they do not charge any fees but take a cut of 0.7-0.8% on every dollar. However, there is a minimum and maximum limit of sending money. If you want to transfer more, you can wire money in through a financial institution such as Wells Fargo or Chase bank or look to see if there is a State bank of India around you. I am quite sure that they charge $15 plus 0.20-0.30% on every dollar( The last time I used it). Hope this helps.
So in this case, if you had $1000 at a 0% promotional rate and a regular balance of $500, and the minimum payment was $100, and you paid $150, $100 would pay down the promotional balance, and the extra $50 would pay down the regular balance. About the only way to make the deal work in your favor is to Transfer money only if you have paid the full amount due on the last two statements before the date of the transfer and are not carrying a revolving balance. Check your monthly statements to make sure they show Finance Charge of 0.00. Many people have never seen such a sight and are unaware that this can be observed in nature. Make sure that you pay each month's bill in full (not the minimum monthly payment due) each month for a whole year after that. Make sure that the bill containing that $1000 (coming out a year after the transfer date) is also paid in full. Very many credit-card users do not have the financial discipline to go through with this program. That is why credit card companies love to push transfer balances on consumers: the whole thing is a cash cow for them where they in effect get to charge usurious rates of interest without running afoul of the law. $50 interest for a one-year loan of $1000 is pretty high at current rates; $50 interest for a two or three month loan where the customer does not even notice the screwing he is getting is called laughing all the way to the bank. See also the answers to this question"
could I decline it so the money would be returned back to the account they were transferred from? As a general banking practise, there is nothing automated that will allow you to mark something as return the funds. You would have to approach your Bank with a written statement mentioning that you don't recognise this credit as belonging to you and request the bank to take appropriate action.
"This is a very trivial scam. Flow is like this: Send money to Mr. X (you, in this case). Call Mr. X and ask for the money back, because mistake. Usually they ask for a wire transfer/cash/gift cards/prepaid cards or something else irreversible/untraceable. Mr. X initiates transfer back to Scammer. Accept the transfer from Mr. X Dispute the original transfer or otherwise cancel it through the netbank Mr. X cannot dispute his transfer to the Scammer, since it was genuinely and intentionally initiated by Mr. X. End up with twice the money, at the expense of Mr. X In other countries this is usually done with forged checks, but transfers can work just as well. As long as the transfer can be retroactively canceled or reversed - the scam works. You mentioned money laundering - this is definitely a possibility as well. They transfer dirty money to you from unidentified sources, and you send a ""gift"" to them with a clear paper trail. When the audit comes - the only proof is that you actually sent them the gift, and no-one will believe your story. You'll have to explain why the Mr. Z who's now in jail sent you a $1K of his drug money. However, in this case I think it is more likely a scam, and the scammer didn't really know what he was doing..."
So, if Chase owes Bank of America $1M, and Bank of America owes Chase $750K, they don't send these as two transactions; Chase simply credits BAC $250K. You didn't specifically ask about ACH transfers, which as littleadv pointed out, are different from wire transfers, but since ACH transfers can often form a part of the whole process, I'll explain that process too. ACH is a payment processing system that works through the Federal Reserve system, among others. The Federal Reserve (through the Fedline and FedACH systems) is by far the largest payment processor. The physical cash itself isn't transferred; in simple terms, the money is transferred through the ACH system between the accounts each bank maintains at the Federal Reserve. Here is a simple example of how the process works (I'm summarizing the example from Wikipedia). Let's say that Bob has an account with Chase and wants to get his paycheck from his employer, Stack Exchange, directly deposited into this account. Assume that Stack Exchange uses Bank of America as their bank. Bob, the receiver, fills out a direct deposit authorization form and gives it to his employer, called the originator. Once the originator has the authorization, they create an entry with an Originating Depository Financial Institution, which acts as a middleman between a payment processor (like the Federal Reserve) and the originator. The ODFI ensures that the transaction complies with the relevant regulations. In this example, Bank of America is the ODFI. Bank of America (the ODFI) converts the transaction request into an ACH entry and submits it, through an ACH operator, to the Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI), which in this case is Chase bank. Chase credits (deposits) the paycheck in Bob's account. The Federal Reserve fits into all of this in several ways. Through systems like Fedline and FedACH, the Fed acts as an ACH operator, and the banks themselves also maintain accounts at the Federal Reserve, so it's the institution that actually performs the settling of accounts between banks.
"I don't think credit cards support depositing money into to begin with. Anyone could deposit money to a Credit Card acccount.  All they need is your bank's name, Visa/Mastercard, and 16 digit number.  It is done through the ""Pay Bills / Make Payments"" function in online banking.  So tell me, what does it mean that PayPal will transfer the money to my VISA card You can use the new balance for spending via Credit Card, the effect is same as making a payment from your chequing account to credit card account.  Will it simply just get transferred to my bank account by the local bank after that Some banks would refund the excess amount from your Credit Card to your Chequing Account after a while, but most don't. People keep credit balance on credit card to make a purchaes larger than credit limit. For example, if your credit limit is $1000, balance is $0, and you made $500 payment to the credit card, you can make a purchase of $1500 without asking for credit limit increase."
There are two (main) ways of transferring large sums of money between banks in such a situation. 1) Have your bank mail a cashier's check.  They may or may not charge you for this (some banks charge up to $6, the bank I work at doesn't charge at all).  You have to wait for the check to go through the mail, but it usually takes just a few days. 2) Wire the money.  This could cost $50 or more in combined fees (usually around $30 to send and $20 to receive), but you get same day credit for the funds. The limits to online transfers are in place to protect you, so that if someone gets into your account the amount of damage they can do is limited.  If you need those limits lifted temporarily, check with your bank about doing so - they may be willing to adjust them for you for a brief period (a day or two).
"AirMoney seems to deliver money either through the Doddle service, or the Royal Mail. You are given a tracking number for either, so the transfer of money is nothing to worry about. You can contact Doddle if you find that they never send a package or they give you a false tracking number. In regards to claiming compensation if you do get shafted, AirMoney is owned by CityForex Limited, who are registered with the FCA (#524412). You can complain here. Finally, in AirMoney's T&C's, Section 5.1.5, they state that ""If there is a Shortage in any Package the Client must notify Airmoney within 48 hours after receipt of the Package. In the event that the Client notifies Airmoney of a Shortage in accordance with Clause 5.1.6, Airmoney may review its CCTV footage of the Package being packaged for delivery."" You can contact then via the details noted in Section 11.11. If you would like my opinion of a good travel money option, Revolut saves you a lot of time - you can load money in your home currency, and withdraw in a number of currencies. Money is exchanged at interbank rates. Alternatively, a number of other prepaid choices exist for UK customers: WeSwap, FairFX, Caxton, ICE, MoneyCorp, Travelex, EVEN, and AA. They all offer differing transaction fees, withdrawal fees etc. You can find out information about them by searching ""Compare multi currency prepaid cards"", and following the link from MoneySupermarket. Hope this helps!"
"There are, in fact, two balances kept for your account by most banks that have to comply with common convenience banking laws.  The first is your actual balance; it is simply the sum total of all deposits and withdrawals that have cleared the account; that is, both your bank and the bank from which the deposit came or to which the payment will go have exchanged necessary proof of authorization from the payor, and have confirmed with each other that the money has actually been debited from the account of the payor, transferred between the banks and credited to the account of the payee.  The second balance is the ""available balance"". This is the actual balance, plus any amount that the bank is ""floating"" you while a deposit clears, minus any amount that the bank has received notice of that you may have just authorized, but for which either full proof of authorization or the definite amount (or both) have not been confirmed. This is what's happening here. Your bank received notice that you intended to pay the train company $X. They put an ""authorization hold"" on that $X, deducting it from your available balance but not your actual balance. The bank then, for whatever reason, declined to process the actual transaction (insufficient funds, suspicion of theft/fraud), but kept the hold in place in case the transaction was re-attempted. Holds for debit purchases usually expire between 1 and 5 days after being placed if the hold is not subsequently ""settled"" by the merchant providing definite proof of amount and authorization before that time. The expiration time mainly depends on the policy of the bank holding your account. Holds can remain in place as long as thirty days for certain accounts or types of payment, again depending on bank policy. In certain circumstances, the bank can remove a hold on request. But it is the bank, and not the merchant, that you must contact to remove a hold or even inquire about one."
For international payments, it may require a chain of multiple intermediaries (correspondent banks) - for example, a payment of $1mm from Kazakhstan to China will likely involve the Kazakhstan bank asking their main correspondent in USA (some major bank such as Chase JPMorgan) to give the money to the relevant chinese bank's correspondent in USA (say, Citi) to then give the money to that chinese bank to then give the money to the actual recipient. Each of those steps can happen because those entities have bilateral agreements, trust and accounts with each other; and each of those steps generally takes time and verification. If you want all payments to happen instantly, then you need all institutions to join a single binding payment system. It's not as easy as it sounds, as it is a nightmare of jurisdiction - for example, if you'd want me (as Bob's bank) to credit Bob instantly, then the system needs to provide solid guarantees that I would get paid even if (a) the payer institution changes its mind, made a mistake or intentional fraud; (b) the payer institution goes insolvent; (c) the system provider gets insolvent. Providing such guarantees is expensive, they need to be backed by multi-billion capital, and they're unrealistic to enforce across jurisdictions (e.g. would an Iranian bank get recourse if some funds got blocked because of USA sanctions). The biggest such project as far as I know is SEPA, across most of Europe. Visa and MasterCard networks perform the same function - a merchant gets paid by the CC network even if the payer can't pay his CC bill or the paying bank goes insolvent."
"Coming from someone who has worked a in the account servicing department of an actual bank in the US, other answers are right, this is probably a scam, the phone number on the letter is probably ringing to a fraudulent call center (these are very well managed and sound professional), and you must independently locate and dial the true contact number to US Bank. NOW. Tell them what happened. Reporting is critical. Securing your money is critical. Every piece of information you provided ""the bank"" when you called needs to be changed or worked around. Account numbers, passwords, usernames, card numbers get changed. Tax ID numbers get de-prioritized as an authentication mechanism even if the government won't change them. The true bank probably won't transfer you to the branch. If the front-line call center says they will, ask the person on the phone what the branch can do that they cannot. Information is your friend. They will probably transfer you to a special department that handles these reports. Apparently Union Bank's call center transfers you to the branch then has the branch make this transfer. Maybe their front-line call center team is empowered to handle it like I was. Either way, plug your phone in; if the call takes less than 5 minutes they didn't actually do everything. 5 to 8 minutes per department is more likely, plus hold time. There's a lot of forms they're filling out. What if that office is closed because of time differences? Go online and ask for an ATM limit increase. Start doing cash advances at local banks if your card allows it. Just get that money out of that account before it's in a fraudsters account. Keep receipts, even if the machine declines the transaction. Either way, get cash on hand while you wait for a new debit card and checks for the new account you're going to open. What if this was fraud, you draw your US Bank account down to zero $800 at a time, and you don't close it or change passwords? Is it over?
Just FYI for the benefit of future users. Haven't been paid yet nor have I paid but some interesting facts. I decided to sign the contract with the person who approached me. The contract seemed harmless whereby I only transfer money once I retrieve the funds. Thanks to your comments here I also understood that I must make sure the funds really cleared in my account and can never be cancelled before I transfer anything.  He gave me the information of the check that matched my previous employer and made sense as it was a check issues just after I had left my job and the state. I did not used the contact details he provided me, but rather found the direct contact details of the go to person in my last institution and contacted them.  I still haven't been able to reclaim the funds, but that is due to internal problems between the state comptroller and my institution. Will come back to update if I am ever successful, but the bottom line is that it is probably not a scam. I am waiting for the final resolution of the case before I post the name of the company which approached me (if it is at all OK per the discussion board rules)
Thanks for the link to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, @ChrisW.Rea. It explained in clear terms that I can withdraw money from and transfer money to the line of credit any time I want. The only monthly payment needed is the minimum payment. And yes, it may have a term after which all remaining principal + interest must be paid back in full. Similar to a credit card, as you pay off your line of credit, you can   draw on it again, up to the limit you are allowed. However, a key   difference between a line of credit and a credit card is that with a   line of credit there is no interest-free grace period. You will have   to pay interest on the amount you borrow from the day you take the   money out. You will receive a monthly statement that shows the amount that you   owe on your line of credit. You must make at least a minimum payment   on that balance every month. (n.b. Specific terms and conditions for lines of credit vary from institution to institution.)