LOL! This saga gets better and better.
So about 80% of The Copyeditor’s Desk’s customers are in China. One of the things we do well is to polish the grammar and style for research articles on arcane topics in mathematics, science, and economics for Chinese academics, who must publish in English-language journals to advance their careers. The more of these we do, the more Chinese academics appear at the virtual door. After Paypal decided to do a number on me, I looked for alternatives and finally decided the simplest and cheapest strategy would be to have clients wire payment to me.
But since I bank in a credit union that’s too small to have a SWIFT number (required for wire transactions), this meant I would have to open a checking account in a major international bank. Hence, it was off to Bank of America. It looked like this ought to work. Now I had two business checking accounts, one at the credit union and one at the venerable BofA, which wished me to transfer $3,000 from the CU into the new account — or else. Fortunately, they gave me three months to get around to this.
So now I have a fancy new bank account in a shiny new high-rise tower and boyoboy. It has two SWIFT numbers, one for transfers in dollars and one for transfer in yuan. Hot diggety.
Kewl, huh?
Okay, so the client’s university goes to wire a small payment into this elegant new bank account.
Shortly, the client emits a squawk:
From: Dr. Big MucketyMuck, Associate Professor, Master Supervisor, Director of International Center for Cooperation and Exchange, Director of the Mogul Center College of Business Administration, Erewhon University of Economics and Business
To: Funny, The Copyeditor’s Desk, Inc.
Hi Funny,
Could you please give me another bank account? There is a sign (‘) in the name of the last one, and my university told me because of it, they can not succeed in wiring the money. Thanks a lot.
Chortle! Got that? They would not accept a wire transaction to a bank account whose name contains an apostrophe. Proposed solution? I should go and open ANOTHER bank account, this one with no punctuation in the business’s name. 😀
How wondrous is that?
Quite wondrous enough to elicit the “enough-is-enough” reaction, that’s for sure. At this point I decide to throw in the towel and just stop doing business with overseas clients. After this, if you can’t pay me by check, I ain’t a-workin’ for you.
This presents a problem: four out every five of our client projects come from Chinese scientists. But what the hell. It’s past time for me to retire, anyway. This, after days of crazy-making hoop-jumping to create that new bidness checking account at BofA.
Closing the fancy-Dan checking account takes two trips down to the bank, one of which consumes an hour of jawing and driving time. As I drive home, I’m feeling frustrated, annoyed as hell, and depressed to lose 80% of my business to Paypal’s crooked greed (yes, I did send a complaint to the AZ Department of Financial Institutions, which licenses PP to do business here).
But…guess what? MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!
Stumble in the door, finish cleaning the kitchen (a job interrupted by the junkets to the bank), then click on the ole computer.
And what should be lurking in the email but a query from a think tank at the Great Desert University: can I, will I, would I puhleeeeze index not one but two volumes in their forthcoming series in Latino studies?
Hot. Diggety. Damn.
I guess it’s God trying to say “there, there, little girl…” 😀
Time passes. Late last night I get curious and ask the Internet an idle question: is it really true you can’t wire money to a credit union?
Sez the Internet: “Well, yes and no”:
From UW Credit Union: https://www.uwcu.org/checking/personal-accounts/wire-transfers/
Wire Transfers
Moving money almost anywhere in the world is fast, easy, safe and convenient with wire transfers. Please note: domestic wire transfers usually occur within 24 hours, while international transfers vary, typically reaching the destination within 7 business days. To complete a wire transfer, log in to Web Branch and select Wire Transfers under the services or visit our nearest branch. Be sure to gather the following information prior to beginning your wire transfer to streamline the process.
Wiring Funds to Your UW Credit Union Account
The sending institution will need the following information:
-
- ABA Number: 2759-7907-6
- Our Name: University of Wisconsin Credit Union
- Our Address: 3500 University Avenue | Madison, WI 53705
- Your full name, address (as it appears on your account), UW Credit Union account number
Note: UW Credit Union does not have a Swift Code, IBAN or other international routing code, nor do we have a correspondent bank. You are able to wire funds to your UW Credit Union Account without this information. Your international financial institution will have a corresponding bank in the U.S. they can wire to, which will forward the funds to UW Credit Union using our ABA routing number: 2759-7907-6.
Uh HUH!
So, we’ll be taking that over to our honored CU branch manager and asking him, if the UW credit union can do this, why can’t we? I think we can: I think by “send it to an international bank,” this may have been what he meant to say…not “you have to have an account at an international bank.” At any rate, I’ll see if he can manage this. If so, maybe, just maybe I can manage to get paid for the work I’ve done over the past couple of weeks, rather than having to comp three clients.
