NY1 For You: Small Business Owners Claim Bank Error Cost Money, Hurt Reputation
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Some Queens small business owners say a banking error cost them time, money and clients, and they want the bank to own up to and pay for its mistake. NY1's Susan Jhun filed the following report.It was a bank robbery of sorts, only the robber was the bank, according to small business owners Irina and Igor Pinkhasov, who wire transferred $43,000 through TD Bank for a shipment of merchandise coming from China. It's a wire transfer that didn't go through.
"We immediately rushed to the bank and said 'where's the money, where's the money' and they said 'all you have to do is just wait,'" said Irina Pinkhasov.
And wait they did, for 23 days. They say they asked TD Bank to investigate the matter all that time to no avail.
Decorators Hub, which specializes in mouldings, has been in business for 10 years and in a matter of a month, Irina Pinkhasov says the business's reputation was crumbling.
"We took the money in advance. We couldn't give the goods," she said. We had to refund all the money and we lost our reputation."
The money was finally transferred without explanation after 23 days but by then, the owners say they paid big for the bank's mistake.
"When the container was released, the storage fees were in the amount of $10,550," said Gary Rodriguez, a consultant for Decorator's Hub.
It's a huge amount of money that the Pinkhasovs had to withdraw from their child's college fund.
NY1 contacted TD Bank and a spokesman said the bank did do an investigation, the findings of which were communicated to the owners. The couple said that's not true.
The TD Bank spokesman went on to say that the investigation found there was a delay of the wire transaction because the beneficiary banks’ address provided by Decorators Hub was incorrect.
The small business owners said that's complete nonsense. They claim that the bank's address was in a template already in TD Bank's system, which they routinely use to make automatic wire transfers to the beneficiary.
"We're a small mom and pop shop and they're the giants and they've really taken advantage of us," Rodriguez said.
NY1 will keep you updated.