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The Last Straw with Motus
August 23, 2019
11:00 pm
Loonie
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As many of you know I have outlined my various problems with Motus over the last 3 months elsewhere.

This past week has revealed more problems which are simply intolerable.

Last Monday evening (19th), I initiated transfers from Tangerine to CIBC and from Motus to CIBC. Both were pushes.

The transfer from Tangerine arrived Tuesday, no problem.

The transfer from Motus had to be done in 3 separate transfers because of their 10K transfer limit. So that's what I did. I printed out the records of the transactions and dated them, showing the time they were sent as the printout does not show this.

To my dismay, the next day these 3 transactions showed on my motus account as pending, to be sent on Friday Aug 23.
i decided to say nothing to them about this as I doubted I could achieve anything but I was very concerned as this delay is causing me problems elsewhere.

On Friday afternoon I checked my motus account and nothing had changed.

On Saturday at 1:14 am I checked my motus account again. To my great surprise, only one of the 3 transfers had been completed. The other two had disappeared from the record entirely and their funds were still in the motus account.

I have checked, double-checked, triple-checked. There is no reason I can see why these transactions should not have gone through. The money is in the account from which I am transferring and has been cleared for some time. The transfer was made from the correct account.

I am furious.

If Motus is not able to satisfy me with these transactions, I may have to close my accounts. I don't really want to do this as it was a lot of bother to set them up and, as a Meridian member-owner, I would like them to succeed. But I may have no alternative, as I have not found Motus reliable, and they are costing me money every day. This bank appears to be run by rank amateurs.

You can be sure I would not be reporting this if it weren't true, as it is against my best interests as a member-owner. But my personal interests as an account holder must come first.

sf-yell

August 24, 2019
4:14 am
Briguy
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Sorry to hear they put you through this Loonie. Sounds like they have a lot of maturing to do, they might be an institution to patronize once they get organized better. I wonder if you did 3 identical transactions for 10,000 that they took that as only one being intentional ? Maybe they processed it manually and just put through one. They should have called you.

August 24, 2019
9:18 am
Loonie
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Thanks for the sympathy, Briguy.
The transactions were for 3 different amounts. I did this on purpose so there could be no confusion. The highest was 10K exactly.

I just got off the phone with them.
Their line of reasoning is that they will only process one transaction of the 3 because, according to them, there is a DAILY limit of 10K UNLESS you phone them and do the transaction on the phone.
My understanding from their website is that it's a TRANSACTION limit, not dqily.

But even if it were a daily limit, why did they accept my 3 requests? The 3 of them were all listed under "View my transactions" Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then, by early Saturday, 2 of them vanished and one went through. The one that went through was the 2nd of my 3 requests, not even the first one, and it was for the middle amount.
The person I spoke to on the phone had no record of the other 2 and was not interested in receiving my reference numbers. Apparently these numbers are effectively useless when you really need them as they can apparently be deleted easily from their system without your knowledge.

The only solution she offered was that we could start again with another request, which would take another four days, bringing us to a total of 10 days from the start incl weekend.

When we asked to speak to her supervisor, she refused, but she did speak to that person herself, after a great deal of prodding. She came back and said that she could put it through as a "rush" transaction which would, IF APPROVED by someone else who doesn't work weekends, go through Monday.

She could not clarify what possible obstacle there could be to such approval, and she continued to refuse, despite numerous requests, to let us speak to the current supervisor. Neither of them attempted to explain the mysterious disappearance of the other two requests, whose Reference numbers I still have.

She "apologized" several times. We did not accept the apology as it was vacuous. She refused, on behalf of motus, to take any responsibility for this unconscionable delay and terrible communications.

We put forward the request for Monday, having no alternative whatsoever. We will be on the phone first thing Monday morning.
She informed us that the people who must "approve" such rush orders don't come in until 8:30, although the phone lines are open at 8.

All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't have to pay for the cheques and I have no GICs or registered plans with them, due mostly to their previously demonstrated incompetence. So, there is no further commitment or entanglement on my part.

August 24, 2019
10:03 am
3oakwest
Ontario, Canada
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As I mentioned some time ago, I'm concerned that they have bitten off more that they can accommodate business wise. And that they are not prepared to staff sufficiently.

I don't know if I will stay with them or not, presently I only have about $150.00 there in my two accounts.

August 24, 2019
10:29 am
Norman1
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Loonie said

The transactions were for 3 different amounts. I did this on purpose so there could be no confusion. The highest was 10K exactly.

I just got off the phone with them.
Their line of reasoning is that they will only process one transaction of the 3 because, according to them, there is a DAILY limit of 10K UNLESS you phone them and do the transaction on the phone.
My understanding from their website is that it's a TRANSACTION limit, not dqily.

But even if it were a daily limit, why did they accept my 3 requests? The 3 of them were all listed under "View my transactions" Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then, by early Saturday, 2 of them vanished and one went through.…

It looks like their system doesn't fully check limits until the day the direct deposits are generated for the requests.

Each request is checked to make sure it is not over the $10,000 limit. However, no check is done to ensure the total requests for a day is also not over $10,000!

I guess one could submit push requests for $9,000, $5,000, and $4,000 for a day. System would dutifully accept each of the requests (each within the $10,000 limit) and queue them up for that day.

But, on that day, direct deposits would be generated for a random subset of the $9,000, $5,000, and $4,000 requests, until the $10,000 limit is reached, and the remaining requests rejected. sf-frown

August 24, 2019
11:56 am
file
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I still think that the "system" is people for the Money Mover offering that process the transactions (initiate the EFTs, potentially even reconcile them).

August 24, 2019
11:57 am
Loonie
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I noticed that AlternaBank has increased its daily limit to 50K, which is more realistic.

August 24, 2019
12:20 pm
Brimleychen
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Loonie, thanks for the invaluable information. I am preparing for my incoming GIC maturity, and probably will go to the branch to save those troubles:-)

August 24, 2019
12:57 pm
toto
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I tried them but soon realized they had a lot of startup problems to iron out , so I transferred everything out and will close the account at the end of the month when interest gets posted.

August 24, 2019
3:50 pm
Alexandre
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I like Motus for different reasons, one of them I managed to score 3% 2 years GIC with them, before they (and everyone else) started dropping rates.
I plan to stay with them for next 2 years, obviously.

Motus money transferring process is quite inconvenient, but I figured workaround that is OK with me. Which is, if I need to withdraw more from Motus than Interac transfer allows, I do it through pull from destination bank.

It won't work for everyone, but if you only occasionally and infrequently move large sums of money, that should do. Especially because pulls are often having much larger limits than puts.
For example, I could pull up to $100,000 from Motus to EQ in one transaction, if I want to.

August 25, 2019
9:03 am
Norman1
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file said
I still think that the "system" is people for the Money Mover offering that process the transactions (initiate the EFTs, potentially even reconcile them).

Is that why it takes three days to "electronically" transfer funds out? sf-laugh

Reminds of me of a discovery years ago someone made about CompuServe's electronic bill payment service in the US.

A utility customer kept on getting hit with late payment fees. Customer called the utility to tell them to get their act together. It should not take over a week to post his electronic payments, done through CompuServe, to his utility account.

He was surprised to find the agent knew about him. "Ahh! You're the one who mails us those weird cheques to pay your bill!" sf-surprised

August 25, 2019
10:38 am
file
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And probably why it doesn't show up as a transaction for awhile... and the only way you can see it is if you going through the log of what you've done in a session...

Just a thought.

August 25, 2019
12:41 pm
Nehpets
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As I stated in earlier discussion(s) about Meridian and now Motus, which appears to have inherited Meridian's inadequate procedures, despite having high hopes for Meridian when I first enrolled in one of their promos a couple of years ago, I've all but given up on them.

The first red flag was the inordinate delays in posting deposits made by EFT and/or mobile deposit and poor quality telephone support.

Based on reports in this discussion thread, nothing has changed and has perhaps become worse.

The highly competent staff at my local Meridian branch have all left to join other FI's to be replaced by less competent junior people.

As soon as upcoming GIC's have matured, I'll be closing all accounts with Meridian and include them in my "avoid" list, to join EQ Bank, Tangerine and Simplii.

As an old, wise financial advisor once said to me:

"There are things a serious investor up with should not put"

Stephen

August 26, 2019
3:42 pm
Loonie
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A final update.

When we phoned early this morning, motus rep said the approval had been done and the transfer initiated, and it was now up to CIBC.

Between 5 and 6 pm today, it finally arrived at CIBC. The entry at CIBC said "manual".

The annoying thing remains that they can do what you require if you twist their arms, but not so much otherwise, and only if you can anticipate how they will NOT do as expected.
Other banks do it efficiently as a matter of course. This is the standard they must meet - ASAP or sooner!

August 27, 2019
7:38 am
Doug
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Loonie said
A final update.

When we phoned early this morning, motus rep said the approval had been done and the transfer initiated, and it was now up to CIBC.

Between 5 and 6 pm today, it finally arrived at CIBC. The entry at CIBC said "manual".

The annoying thing remains that they can do what you require if you twist their arms, but not so much otherwise, and only if you can anticipate how they will NOT do as expected.
Other banks do it efficiently as a matter of course. This is the standard they must meet - ASAP or sooner!  

Interesting, @Loonie! Thanks for the share and update! The CR entry at CIBC seems to indicate my theory that Meridian Credit Union/Motus Bank (they're both the same in terms of transaction processing inefficiency/non-expediency!) manually post all or certain EFT transactions (DRs and CRs), possibly delineated by transaction value. 🙁

I'm now upgrading, with deepest regrets, Motus Bank/Meridian Credit Union to the highest possible classification on my avoidance scale, that of strongest avoid, for the above-noted reasons.

Cheers,
Doug

August 27, 2019
10:48 am
Nehpets
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Doug said
....my theory that Meridian Credit Union/Motus Bank (they're both the same in terms of transaction processing inefficiency/non-expediency!)....  

It would seem your speculation is correct, Doug, according to a reliable source, with inside knowledge, with whom I recently spoke. Both Meridian and Motus are using the same operational facilities, including the same call center.

I'm now upgrading, with deepest regrets, Motus Bank/Meridian Credit Union to the highest possible classification on my avoidance scale, that of strongest avoid, for the above-noted reasons.

Me too!

Stephen

August 27, 2019
12:16 pm
Loonie
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I figure I must have discovered all their flaws by now! Will keep the accounts open for foreseeable future as it was such a pain to open. But I could never use motus for frequent transactions with this archaic "push" system which regularly takes four full business days. What WERE they thinking, opening up a brand new bank with outdated tech??

I managed to get the recent 3% deal at Meridian, which I didn't really expect so am feeling more cheery about them - at least for now. That will be very useful to me. I left it to the last minute, last Saturday, as I didn't really think I'd get anywhere.

Yes, Meridian and motus are both in the same building and sometimes share the same staff, but ne'er the twain shall meet when it comes to your money. They can't talk to teach other any more efficiently than with any other FI.

September 10, 2019
9:01 am
Indmuny
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Initiated transfer August 30th 5am and it is yet to be available at motus ( Sept 10). God only knows when it will be and it's time to move on from motus - the rate reduction today cements it.

September 10, 2019
11:58 am
toto
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I just got my motus account closed, but even that proved difficult.

September 10, 2019
1:39 pm
Loonie
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Indmuny said
Initiated transfer August 30th 5am and it is yet to be available at motus ( Sept 10). God only knows when it will be and it's time to move on from motus - the rate reduction today cements it.  

It will be available 3 business days after it was deposited at Motus.
The Labour Day holiday slowed the process down an extra day,.
It probably arrived Thurs Sept 5; if so, it will be available today, but not until late evening.

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