Dear Unicredit Slovenija Bank and various hidden
onlookers
Picture this. You are in Slovenia. You want to
buy computer bits from Germany for 116,75, using your Unicredit
Slovenija bank account.
How much should you send? The answer, you might
think, is an obvious 116,75. Any fees for sending the money will be
deducted separately from your account.
Wrong. This is Slovenia. The correct answer is
116,75 + guess the amount.
The amount you have to guess is the sum which
will be stolen from your 116,75 en route to your vendor.
But Unicredit don't know anything about this and
it is nothing to do with them. Clear now?
The whole of this story is that on 6 Sep 2023 I
sent 116,75 via SWIFT from Unicredit Slovenija to Best Electronics in
Germany and they only received 106,75. Unicredit eventually admitted in
an email 9 Oct 2023 that 10 was deducted by an "intermediary bank" and
are doing that shrugging thing.
Shrugging (optionally accompanied
by an impatient or helpless look) is a vital part of Slovenian culture and
the endpoint of many confrontations between its innumerable legal utopias and the
gritty reality.
The
first baker's dozen of problems with Unicredit's shrugging argument (see
the email above) are as follows:
1. Unicredit Slovenija is behaving like a slippery eel as usual. Article
214 of applicable law ZPLaSSIED suggests "The
payment system operator shall ensure strength, clarity, transparency and
enforceability of the legal basis of the payment system in all segments
of the
acquis and for all relevant aspects of the activities of this
payment system."
I contend arrival of the right amount of money is a relevant aspect.
2. Unicredit is admitting quite positively that
it only succeeded in sending 91.43% of the payment due.
3. About that transparency and clarity. Having
deducted 116,75 from my account, plus a 42 cent fee, Unicredit never
told me that a payment of 116,75 could not be made.
This was what it contracted to do when it
debited my account. It did not contract to make 106,75 arrive.
It did not contract to get rid of any of the
116,75 or share it out among its different front companies, but to pay
116,75 to the payee.
But Unicredit has sat on its hands and claims
that from the instant my 116,75 departed, it is not even in a position
to know if the transfer to its own sister bank across the Alps did not
succeed as its client(s) intended.
What Unicredit did do was to try to create a
false dichotomy between the money's departure and its arrival, as though
the two were not connected and its obligations ended with the former.
Funniest of all, Unicredit in Ptuj has tried to
pretend recipient bank Hypovereinsbank is a far away thing of which it
knows nothing.
In fact Unicredit got its first big break in
banking
when it bought Hypovereinsbank in 1869 - now Unicredit AG.
About the legal enforceability, Unicredit's
attitude is that an investigation of my missing ten or twenty or more
tens of euros would not be worth the amount involved, and makes us look
bad.
Know what? That's because you are bad.
The great Slovenian shrugging
scenario is key to configuring an end-to-end solution. Why would
Unicredit think or decide I wanted to send 106,75 and not the right
amount? Shrugging.
Where and when were the parties
and particularly the payer informed it was all going wrong? Never.
Shrugging.
Who is this other company you
claim is responsible for the 10 charge? Shrugging.
How come I knew nothing about
this until the goods didn't arrive? What did you do? Shrugging.
For all of the above I got
charged 10,42. Why? Shrugging.
4. So there was a hidden charge. Hidden, we are
meant to believe, not just from the payer, but from Unicredit and the
payee too. But not only this! The
additional 10 to pay it
has been taken from the money expected by the payee.
Slovenians can rejoice, as both non-Slovenian
sellers, and buyers on
foreign markets
where goods can be seven times cheaper than in Slovenia
can be super-inconvenienced by Unicredit's inability
and failure to predict any such deduction. Thanks to Unicredit
Slovenija, no one
knows what's going on. Each thinks the other, or one of their banks, is
trying to rip him off.
Time and money are wasted in a
multiplicative fashion.
The customer is entitled to a noticeable warning
about all the costs in advance.
Instead the banking system has masterfully
combined an unlawfully concealed irregular fee with an added cost for
screwing everything up.
There's a chance of multiplying the event,
turning one transfer into two or three.
But it's not just my 10 that's gone missing, is
it? Surely this must happen to every comparable transaction?
5. It would be manifestly chaotic and
inefficient for Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to unexpectedly deduct
money from every such payment.
By doing so, Unicredit is like an arsonist,
setting fires with every transfer, with everyone blaming each other for
an incomprehensible, annoying and difficult to trace error in the
payment amount.
A myriad problems would be generated requiring,
er, more bank transactions.
6. Oh but it was this other bank - an
intermediary, Unicredit say.
And Unicredit don't know who that is, they say.
But I did not ask Unicredit to send my 116,75
to an intermediary whose whereabouts are unknown.
I did however state on Unicredit's web form that
I wanted it sent to HYVEDEMM448.
7. No prior warning about any intermediary or
its costs, whether foreign or domestic, were apparent during the
transaction.
CSMs don't want to deal with me, nor I with
them.
8. Multiple charges were placed on a single
transaction, which portrayed a cost 25 times lower than the charge
ultimately exacted - for a non-useful result!
No receipt was issued for the charge to the
payer.
9. The cost of the transaction was
misrepresented. 42 cents is bad enough ("It's free if you pay online",
Unicredit purred early on). The cost of the first attempt proved
(according to the bank's belated claim) to be 10,42 plus all the hassle
and confusion of further communications with the bank and between myself
and Best Electronics.
10. So basically Unicredit
Slovenija's plan is to cause hassle and confusion in every single
cross-border transaction involving money going to not-Slovenian people.
Every such payment will arrive
10 short, siphoning off funds to support Hamas or Putin, but actually
probably siphoned straight up the nose of some creep in Ljubljana.
But that is a matter entirely
between Unicredit and him, as my domestic charges have already been supposedly contained by Unicredit Slovenija's outrageous 42 cent fee for
three seconds' computing, and by its statement "Domači
stroki plačniku, tuji stroki prejemniku". As you can see in the
attached screenshot.
11. On the other hand, "Since
this was a transaction in Germany" and since Germany is not part of
Slovenia, it falls under the "foreign" category mentioned here. "Domači
stroki plačniku, tuji stroki prejemniku" it says (again).
As for where the money disappears to, it is
beyond credibility that Unicredit has "no information". Having
information about where money comes from and goes to is why banks exist.
If you want a bank that doesn't have this information, Unicredit
Slovenija is the one for you!
12. If Unicredit did not know "in advance" who
its intermediary was (afterwards), how could it have known where to send
them the money, for them to send to Unicredit's other bank in Rosenheim?
If Unicredit does not know "in advance" who its
intermediary is, how can it know its fee? If Unicredit cannot tell you
its fee "in advance", how will you know how much extra to add to
your payment, to ensure the correct payment will arrive at the other end of
the transfer?
13. Unicredit said it would be 42
cents, that foreign charges were to be met by the payee.
But I was charged nearly 25 times
more, for which Unicredit is having a go at blaming foreigners. Or is
it? We do not know, as Unicredit Slovenija says it does not know through
whom it transferred the 116,75 to Unicredit AG, so the customer
cannot find out if they are foreign or not. So, so transparent.
A systemic ripoff contrary to EU banking principles, defective in
operation, involving discrimination between Member States, and
perpetrated by the contractor Unicredit Slovenija upon the rightfully
suspicious Slovenian banking customer and eurozone dweller, is therefore
exposed.
PART 2
As Unicredit may be able to see, I have now sent
the "unpaid" 10 deducted by this unwelcome intermediary to Best
Electronics. Again.
According to experience, this second
10 should completely
disappear, in the performance of a transfer which, as a consequence of
its architecture, will never take place. I'm enclosing a screenshot of
this second transaction for anyone who's interested.
But on 10 October Best Electronics received my
10, so we can add inconsistency to Unicredit's "charging methodology"
rap sheet.
Meanwhile I am not getting my computers
upgraded, so I'm going to anyone who will listen to reclaim my twenty
euros and compensation for loss of all the computing power I need
to keep up with these self-defeating scams.
First in line is the
Bank of Slovenia complaint service, which like all consumer-facing
assistance in Slovenia looks really helpful, official, and just the
ticket. Until you press "send" and it doesn't work. In this way
the
Slovenian banking industry has automated the shrugging process.
To not warn about a charge is bad enough, but to
just snatch it out of a transaction between two counterparties is a
ludicrously amateurish performance, designed to ruin things. What if I
sent only nine euros?
The dubious idea Unicredit is
floating here is that the outcome of a bank transfer is unpredictable,
and that the intermediary's 10 charge is a "surprise".
And sadly
for the Slovenian bank's shrugtastic theory that all its
responsibilities ended on debit day, a reminder from Directive
2007/64/EC:
"The payer's payment service provider should assume liability for
correct payment execution, including, in particular the full amount of
the payment transaction and execution time, and full responsibility for
any failure by other parties in the payment chain up to the account of
the payee."
Fortunately there is an
organisation overseeing PSPs who have rules to keep things running
smoothly, the way non-Slovenians expect. If the contract to send 116,75
cannot be accurately fulfilled, the transaction should become an
"R-transaction", rather than Unicredit doing a giant smelly dump on
people's attempts to buy and sell stuff.
Says the European Payments Council
"A 'Return' occurs when a credit transfer is
diverted from normal execution after interbank Settlement, and is sent
by the Beneficiary Bank to the Originator Bank for a credit transfer
that cannot be executed for valid reasons such as wrong account number
or account closed with the consequence that the Beneficiary account
cannot be credited on the basis of the information contained in the
original credit transfer message."
Alas if Unicredit knew anything about money, it
would be that money talks. And it mostly says goodbye. A deal to send
1 is a deal to send 1, not 1
or -9.
Therefore I am asking Unicredit to pay
the amount properly.
I am asking Unicredit to ensure the transfer of
the 10 goes through to Best Electronics without any intermediary charge
made without due warning.
I am asking Unicredit to return any 10 I was
not expecting to pay.
I am asking Unicredit to identify the
intermediaries Unicredit Slovenija uses to transfer money to Unicredit
AG, an entity about which Unicredit claims to know nothing.
I am asking Unicredit to
explicitly display all applicable fees on its internet banking such that
the true cost can be evaluated before a transfer.
I'm asking Unicredit to not
contract with CSMs to a situation where fees can be deducted from
payments in transfer to the detriment of the parties, but to try the
sensible and EPC-authorised methodology instead.
As Unicredit will probably be
aware,
"Banks,
companies issuing electronic money, payment institutions and payment
institutions with a waiver based in the Republic of Slovenia must obtain the
appropriate permission
from the Bank of Slovenia to provide payment services in
accordance with the
Banking Act or the
Act on Payment Services, Electronic Money Issuing Services and Payment
Systems. Account
information service providers can provide services after prior registration
with the Bank of Slovenia."
https://www.bsi.si/placila-in-infrastruktura/placilne-storitve-in-elektronski-denar/placilne-storitve
Perhaps
Unicredit can choose retrospectively who its intermediary was, to get into
the best legal position to not give me my 10 back. But I don't see how that
saves Unicredit from Articles 14 (paras. 1-4), 23(1), 23(4(3)), 23(7),
23(9), 23(14), 23(15), 23(16), 23(18), 23(20), 32, 50(1), 50(4(3)), 51(5),
51(9), or 149(1(2)) of ZvPOT-1. Articles
108, 211(3), 221, 228, 237, 240(4), 306 of KZ-1 are interesting, while from Regulation (EU)
No 260/2012 we learn:
"The creation of an integrated market for
electronic payments in euro, with no distinction between national and
cross-border payments is necessary for the proper functioning of the
internal market."
A necessity
in stark contrast to that of this spiv intermediary, be he domestic or
foreign, who has had away with my 10.
Please also
note Article 9 ibid.
This
somewhat destroys Unicredit Slovenija's thinly disguised prejudice against
"foreign" payments. Alas, even the European Payments Council does not seem
to be on Unicredit's side, with
"The
remittance data supplied by the Originator in the Credit Transfer
Instruction must be forwarded in full and without alteration by the
Originator Bank and any intermediary institution and CSM to the Beneficiary
Bank....The
Beneficiary Bank must also deliver received remittance data in full and
without alteration to the Beneficiary."
But
Unicredit did alter and is altering, and did not deliver
and is not delivering the remittance data without alteration to the
Beneficiary.
A
distinction was made between national and
international transfers.
Its pricing
was not legally displayed.
No receipt was issued by the unknown intermediary
to the person footing the bill.
Unicredit
in its contractual relations does not adhere
to the Four Corners Model, and its actions did not, "as
a minimum, cover elements relevant to the execution of a credit transfer".
Their agent did not return
the funds when it failed to find that the Beneficiary account
could not "be
credited on the basis of the information contained in the original credit
transfer message."
In case you are dozing off from all the
shrugging, the information referred to here is my desire to send Best
Electronics 116,75.
See also
their 3.4.
Then
there's Recommendation 5 of the
ERPB working group on transparency for retail payment end-users,
which suggests PSPs:
"Use standards and applications
suitable for including identified data sets 'end-to-end'. Upgrade or change
these standards when necessary."
As SWIFT
sees things, it is ready to "Eliminate payments friction with upfront
account verification":
"Before sending a payment, banks can check the
validity of the beneficiary account by comparing it against our vast library
of transaction data thats over 9 billion payments travelling between 4
billion accounts every single year."
I'm also
liking
"It is essential, for the fully integrated straight-through processing of
payments and for legal certainty with respect to the fulfilment of any
underlying obligation between payment service users, that the full amount
transferred by the payer should be credited to the account of the payee.
Accordingly, it should not be possible for any of the intermediaries
involved in the execution of payment transactions to make deductions from
the amount transferred."
And who
could forget
"It should be possible for the payment service provider to specify
unambiguously the information required to execute a payment order
correctly."
While
intermediaries should
"Be transparent to the Scheme and in no way affect or modify the obligations
of the Participants."
Twice is not
an accident or coincidence, and so in the
interests of the transparency
recommended by Article 4 of 260/2012, when
Unicredit finds
out who its business partner is for transferring money to Germany, I am
asking it to also
reveal to which
of the above categories (i) to (viii) this
sepulchral entity belongs.
It looks
like Unicredit's fine will be limited to
125,000 under Article 318
supra. Per instance, I hope. There's no need to worry, as in my case it can
just lend itself
125,000 and then not pay itself back.
I hereby grant the
recipients of this email the right to examine all data they might consider
not examining using data protection as an excuse.
Instead of seeing customers, and particularly
international ones, as cows to be milked, Unicredit would do well to explain
why they are so good at sneaky tricks, but not competent enough investors to
pay decent interest rates or operate a predictable payment service. For
these prices I'd expect a luxury service, not these lies and this
shrug-show.
Presently, Unicredit's assertions are not worth
the pixels they are printed on! As it may rely
on XI 7 of its
T&C, I shall rely on the obligations it does have, as enumerated above,
which taken together appear sufficient to prosecute ex officio.
XI 2, as you can see,
rests on
regulation
binding the intermediary or third person involved,
which includes of course the Four Corners Model, showing payers and payees
have no interaction with Clearing and Settlement Mechanisms, and therefore
cannot be billed by them - with or without a warning on Day D or an invoice
afterwards. And certainly not out of the transfer itself. And y'know:
"...it is essential that the processing of
credit transfers and direct debits is not hindered by business rules or
technical obstacles such as compulsory adherence to more than one system for
settling cross-border payments."
Which I will
argue outranks
Unicredit's claims of a right to irresponsibility.
Meanwhile
at other banks, the EU was frequently mentioned in the context of cheap
transfers with no intermediaries, with Delavska Hranilnica offering to wire
116,75 to Best Electronics' bank for 2,30 all in, and swanky bank NLB
coming in at 5, rising to 9 for non-EU Switzerland, still cheaper than
Unicredit for EU euro transfers - even for non-customers.
For the
edification of fellow victims these emails are published at
www.aaa.si/unicredible
Lep Pozdrav
Julian Bohan
PART 3
To the Minister of Finance, 12 October 2023
Dear Klemen
Dealing with the problem of banks shrugging about money being
stolen from customers in irregular banking practices in Slovenia, I
was drawn to the seemingly helpful site of the Bank of Slovenia, which
invited me to send it a complaint.
I was pleasantly surprised, as Slovenia comes across as a very
anti-complaint culture.
I did so, but
https://vsebina.bsi.si/PUFS
wouldn't send. So I emailed the complaint to pr@bsi.si instead
and asked for a reference number.
Unfortunately, and due perhaps to the failed automation or
shrugging, the Bank of Slovenia has not got back to me.
Being ignored doesn't facilitate the complaint process, and I
wonder if they are genuine.
It's starting to look like they are anti-complaint after all. No
complaint can officially exist without a number, and there is not much
point to a complaint with no response. So by the sheer power of
inactivity the Bank of Slovenia is implying we have no complaints.
My feeling is that the Bank of Slovenia may have only expressed
an interest in banking complaints to meet some EU diktat requiring them
to be complaint compliant.
Of course the EU inspector of complaint-compliance would not
actually have a complaint and would never fill in or try to send the
form.
So they would never find out that the Bank of Slovenia's
professed interest in our complaints is a sham.
And if it can't get the computing right for a complaint form,
what are its chances with counting money and so on?
Perhaps it worked once, and this can all be traced back to the
discovery in some office, when it broke, that life was a lot easier
after that.
Please encourage them to make the anti-complaint complaints
system accept and respond to complaints, and to send me the complaint
number for mine, which you can see at
www.aaa.si/unicredible.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
LP
Julian Bohan
PART 4
Notes on online dispute resolution.
Notes on data protection.
CONCLUSIONS (BASED ON RESPONSES SO FAR)
Every hour, thousands in unearned fees are generated in Slovenia by
shrugging. The victims are those who cannot be bothered to argue the
toss.
The power of shrugging ensures Slovenia's banking economy is carried on
the shoulders of angry-customer-facing personnel, with shrugging
contributions from lawyers and consumer protection services, all the way
up to the highly trained professional shrugs of policemen, financial
inspectors, data protection officials, ombudsmen, and political
operators.
Experience suggests one shrug at the branch level is worth ~2 euros,
with ~5 shrugs required to steal 10. But the value per shrug to the
bankers will steadily diminish if further layers of shrugging are added
during the dispute phase, even as sunk cost error and -
paradoxically - the profit motive encourage ever harder shrugging.
The SWIFT system is being abused. And shrugging in Slovenia is key to
this.
Charges for transfers between Unicredit and Unicredit are not taking
place as lawfully intended, requiring remedial transactions.
Customers are being charged for no reason, for something Unicredit has
no problem doing for 42 cents, and for which the costs are substantially
the same, when the payee is in Slovenia.
It is hard to get Slovenians to join the War on Shrugs, as shrugging is
part of a culture of treating people like downtrodden suckers.
In this it is easier for the victims to acquiesce to discrimination
against themselves, as it is considered socially embarrassing to
kick up a stink.
Those who choose to focus on the "type" of complainants, or reply with
accusations that these are degrading Slovenian business, its regulation,
or Slovenia generally, are simply seeking to distract from the
substantive issue of Unicredit stealing their money.
As such they are complicit in their own (generalised) reputation.
Without shrugging, the economy would have to work according to European
and national laws suggesting that bank customers should not be charged
10 for a SWIFT transfer, or differently than for national transfers -
and not charged at all by intermediaries - except by prior agreement and
fair warning.
Neither are part of Unicredit's plan which its staff don't know it has.
To avoid simple checks of its own data, Unicredit has chosen to insert
an unknown extra company or companies, creating an unnecessary layer of
bureaucracy, slowness, data protection risk, inefficiency, and cost, in
order to generate this charge. For reasons unknown to themselves, to
regulators, to their service users, or to you.
Perhaps these reasons will become clear when we find out who and what
the intermediaries and their relationships are.
But there is a lot of shrugging to be done before that can happen.
Those shrugging that a pathetic
10 is not worth bothering about are reminded of the many far more
essential items they buy priced at less than 10.
Those in finance who are still not convinced, who think 10 is nothing,
and are still shrugging about it, are invited to
send me their own 10.
It might arrive.
RESOLUTION OF THE RECEIPT OF THE COMPLAINT
18 October 2023
Dear Mr. Bohan,
thank you for your email. We are sorry that you had problems with our
new channel for complaints. We would like to explain that we have
successfully received several complaints and you are the first reporting
to us with this kind of problem. We will look into it.
Notwithstanding the above, we can confirm receiving your complaint via
email. It is under the review with our professional services and we will
get back to you as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
BANKA SLOVENIJE Evrosistem | E: pr@bsi.si
PART 5
LEGAL CHAFF: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG
2 November 2023
Dear Mr. Bohan Julian,
In the Complaints Monitoring Department, we received your email in which
you requested an explanation for the foreign payment made on 9th October
2023, in the amount of EUR 10, to the recipient Best Electronics. We
appreciate your message and below is our response:
UniCredit Banka Slovenija d.d. (hereinafter referred to as the Bank)
executed the foreign payment in the full amount of EUR 10. Additionally,
an outbound commission fee of EUR 0.42 was subsequently applied, in
accordance with the Bank's tariff.
Again, this was a transaction to Germany, but in this case, our foreign
payment made a manual correction of the payment order, so the transfer
was not carried out through intermediary bank, which would again
deducted EUR 10 for order execution as in the first case, when you made
the foreign payment on 6th September 2023 in the amount of EUR 116.75.
We kindly ask you that in case, you will be making another payment order
to Germany, enter the IBAN number of receiver and not routing number.
Best regards,
UniCredit Banka Slovenija d.d.
Customer Contact Center and Support
Complaints Monitoring
2 November 2023
Dear Unicredit
Thank you for your email, which has been added to www.aaa.si/unicredible
for reference purposes.
Having never even heard of routing numbers until today, I am however
accustomed to using IBAN numbers and SWIFT numbers. I recall your internet
banking likes to have both.
Intrigued by your squirming, I turned to the internet. "Routing numbers are
used only on US accounts," says https://moneytransfers.com/iban/iban-vs-routing-number.
Maybe that explains why I've never heard of routing numbers. In my
simpleminded way, I would expect Slovenian internet banking to refuse to
accept a number for a transfer to Germany that is not used in Europe.
If what you say is correct, why didn't it refuse to accept it?
Do you mean the SWIFT number? They are not the same thing. Unfortunately for
your attempt to rectify events in your favour by heaping unannounced
responsibilities upon the customer, "Germany has an 8-digit routing
code", according to Wikipedia.
So is moneytransfers.com wrong?
Where on the transfer application is the 8-digit number to which you refer?
I attach a screenshot of a recent payment where an IBAN was used, but no
IBAN appears in the record of any such payment. This makes your response
suspiciously convenient. But legally, it doesn't make any difference to
your position.
The fee was deducted out of the transfer, contrary to the abovementioned
regulatory requirements of https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/sites/default/files/KB/files/item%201%20EPC125-05%20SCT%20RB%20v7.2%20approved.pdf
and https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:094:0022:0037:en:PDF
and https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32007L0064 and
the Four Corners Model.
The complaint remains unresolved.
There was no warning of a fee in advance for
allegedly not providing Best Electronics' IBAN, which is DE
96 7112 0077 0363 8614 15, and no
receipt was issued, per the aforementioned Slovenian statute ZvPOT-1.
Also you do not mention that transfers accompanied by the instruction
"All Unicredits, do not steal this" are exempt from the fee (see
foregoing).
As you know, if you personally drop ten euros you don't forget about it and
leave it on the ground. Perhaps you have a personal minimum for which you do
not consider it worth bending over. Here, you attempt to make valid a charge
made lacking warning or a receipt, by placing fault with the customer.
But here Slovenia's empathy is
revealed in all its typical non-existence.
The customer would not choose a method designed to cost him more -
whether the entity issuing the bill is Slovenian or foreign. Yet you are
implying I did.
Speaking of which, who are they, and which is it? And where is this secret
intermediary registered - America?
Basically the customer should not be able to make a mistake. If,
due the faulty design of your system, I did (which I dispute) it's still
Unicredit's fault, whether the ten euros has been misappropriated by
accident or design.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the
people some of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the
time. Perhaps it is time to ban non-Slovenian customers, since you find
foreign things so distinctly and institutionally troubling. If you think
getting my name backwards adds to your credibility for accuracy, think
again.
Which number do you call a routing number?
Where's my ten euros?
LP
Julian Bohan
For the latest ex officio action see here.
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