$5,000 CIBC error in wire transfer to Revolut
Hi all,
My wife and I recently moved home to Ireland with our newborn son after spending 7 amazing years in Canada.
Prior to the move, we tested out doing a wire transfer from our CIBC accounts to our Revolut accounts. These failed and were returned as the account number was our IBANs with the letters removed instead of the full IBAN as required when transferring to Europe. The bank teller claimed it was our mistake as we reviewed and approved the details beforehand and didn't flag that they had removed the letters. I was checking what information I knew about, which was our personal details, and I guess I naively assumed the bank teller would understand the banking nuances of transferring to Europe.
Due to the error, the transfers never went through and we waited as long as we could before we had to transfer the remainder of our funds as we were due to fly home the following morning. We discovered the above mistake during these final wire transfers.
These final transfers are where we lost the amount in the title. The most important point I repeatedly echod was that the funds must remain in CAD and were not to be converted. This was also repeated to the branch manager. My final wire transfer reached my revolut account successfully in CAD whereas my wives substantially higher transfer amount was converted by the intermediary Bank while on route to her revolut account. This conversion resulted in a $5,000 fee.
I immediately emailed the bank manager as he gave me his card in case anything went wrong again. His response was that the funds left CIBC as CAD and that they have no control over what the intermediary Bank does with our funds, so if they performed a transfer that resulted in extra charges, we were out of luck.
I cannot accept this to be true. How can a charge that large be taken without my approval or even an understanding that it might occur and that CIBC had no control over it? This was information that should have been highlighted.
Sorry for the long post, we are both unemployed, with a newborn baby, trying to settle into a new country, and didn't expect this big of a financial hit when transferring our money out of CIBC.
Is there anything I can do or am I out of luck?