OOP’s, maybe we did make a little innocent mistakey

We left off at the point where I suddenly received a phone call from a women who said she was a regional head of trust matters…whatever that means.  If she means trust as in trustworthy, she has her hands full.

She was very pleasant, and I mean VERY pleasant as she explained that there was a big misunderstanding and that the fellow who was sending me the forms didn’t realize that I had actually signed the form and then scanned and attached it to my reply…even though it had a completely different file name then the one he sent.  He also sent me an email the next day requesting I sign an additional form (IRA distribution form) and made no mention of my still having to sign the original form.  OK, I when I returned the signed form I did complain about the fact that it was originally printed in gray type which made the scanned image difficult to read.  This was the reason given for why he didn’t think the form was signed.  On the other hand, if that was true, why didn’t he mention it in his reply concerning the second form?

Well, anyway I was swamped with work and didn’t look at my email for several days.  This means the email had long scrolled way out of sight.  Follow up emails were eventually sent, but again only referenced the second form.

What I actually transpired (and why I thought for two weeks I had made a really smart move) was as follows.

• The decision to pay the loan with the proceeds of the IRA was verbally communicated on January 8th.
• The original authorization to use the IRA money to pay off the loan and distribute the remainder to me was sent, signed, and returned on the 13th.
• The request for a signing the IRA distribution was sent on the 14th.
• The loan was due on the 15th and I assumed it was paid on time.
• On Jan 20, the stock market starts a rapid 5% decline for the remainder of the month
• A second request was made to sign the second form was made on the 20th, and then again, on the 25th at which time they are clearly only requesting the IRA distribution form be signed.  (At this point I was considering not having the entire remainder paid out although I ultimately decided to do so.)  I was still under the impression that the loan had been paid off when due and the second form was only required for me to receive the distribution of the remainder.
• January 28th, the IRA funds are finally sold.
• I returned the signed IRA distribution form on the morning of January 29.  (Apparently this was not realized as I received yet another request later on the 29th.)

So, here’s my analysis…

1. I had a right to expect that the IRA investments would have been liquidated on the day after the signed order was delivered, e.g. Thursday, Jan 14th.
2. Even accepting that an innocent error was made, at some point PNC realized the error and sold the funds on Thursday, the 28th…before getting a signed IRA distribution form, ergo it was not needed to convert the investments.
3. The earliest documented date they realized they had the signed order (first document) was Monday, Jan 25th.
4. No attempt by PNC Wealth management was made to rectify on their own initiative what they must have realized was their error.  (Interestingly, I’ve been later informed that supposedly they did try to contact me to rectify the issue but the emails and phone calls were innocuous and which I thought was some sort of exit interview and ignored.  No one ever mentioned that they might owe me money which would certainly have gotten my attention.  At this point, that assertion really doesn’t seem more than blowin’ smoke…).
5. The PNC wealth management team (at least the ones on my account) did their best duckin’ and weavin’ over the subsequent months and directly denied any mishandling of my account (see 4 parenz above).

So, back to my discussion with the new player, miz trust management (pun intended).  So after a long monolog on how it was an innocent error and there was after all some mishandling of the transaction…I am offered a settlement of $15,000.  Well, I’m actually pleasantly surprised because up to now I;ve just been stonewalled.  I say fine and could I please see the analysis that makes this the correct sum.

Miz trust management tells me that she’s not prepared to show me how this number was arrived at…and that certainly raised the hairs on the back of my neck.  I responded that I didn’t understand how they could make an offer without some sort of justification nor could they reasonably expect me to agree to that amount without a rationale for why it was fair.  So I went off to do some homework.  Read the results in the next post.

Tagged as: ira, wealth management