As far as I know (and I have been wiring and receiving money internationally ever since the days when they used to use "TELEX") it is the customer's responsibility to identify the intermediary bank as part of the wire transfer instructions given to the bank where the transfer will originate.
Precisely the problem. Liability is shifted on to the client, who is obviously ill-equipped to discuss contracts that they aren't a party to - or even discover the parties involved. This is the enabler for banks to be vague and careless.
Or at least that has been my experience with intermediary banks. So they don't get to route it which ever way they want to so as to siphon and extra $10 out of it.
Of course they do. I've seen it myself. Banks choose who they want to handle the money. Clients don't have the option of selecting intermediary banks. What wire transfer form let you have the option to specify the all the banks in the chain?
In fact, more often than not, and if you were to read the wire transfer form it will say that the bank is merely acting as your agent and is simply following your instructions.
Sure, that's called a disclaimer. Again, a shift of liability on to the client, so when the hidden fees hit, the clients legal recourse is diminished. The disclaimer protects the bank, not the client.
I've been sending and receiving Int'l wire transfers ever since the days when they used the old Telex system and have done so through banks as well as brokerage firms and yet I cannot remember a single instance where I paid a red cent to an intermediary or having ever paid more than $15 per transfer.
I'd be curious what jurisdiction and circumstances have given you transparency (if not pure luck). I just sent a SEPA wire within eurozone from a bank that states all outbound wires with a eurozone destination incur no fees - and it went to a broker who guaranteed no fees on their end. Yet money was siphoned. It wasn't much, but it was an undisclosed hidden fee.
Europeans report having the same problem - and it's particularly nasty when purchasing a product or service, where the amount must arrive in full. A colleague's transfer was skimmed just a few euros by an intermediate bank, and the recipient was shorted, and would not send the product. When he called the bank to complain about the siphoning, he was told to mail the cash difference to the recipient (because if he had wired the difference, that too would be siphoned by some undisclosed amount).
It boils down to this... Money, and if it can be wire transferred, it can also be moved. If you're unhappy with your bank, you oughta try to play the wire fee lottery yourself;
You don't get it. The only way to not play the wire fee lottery (officially) is to not send a wire. As a practical matter, the only way to send a wire with some degree of not getting money skimmed is to find someone who has sent from the same bank to the same bank, and based on their experience of winning the lottery, you wire through the same path.
the odds are with you that you'll land it in a bank that will not mislead you or conspire against you by siphoning your money.
I have a broker right now who has my money, and cannot for his life quote the cost of the wire, even when I provide the BIC for the destination. His brokerage is at the mercy of the partner bank. All he can tell me is what other customers feed back to him on what is charged. He says the average is roughly 14 GBP, but it's never exact. He was on the phone for half an hour with his payments department, who was talking to the first bank the money passes through. Another broker from the same firm told me before I sent the money that there was no fee on his end. What he neglected to tell me was what the intermediary bank was charging. So the money got siphoned on the way in, and it will get siphoned on the way out.
This is common. If you've found a competent banker who is diligent about collecting feedback on what fees end up getting applied, you should stick with that banker. But certainly you cannot extrapolate your experience across how all banks operate, because you've not experienced a bank telling you they cannot quote the wire cost. I have yet to find a bank that can accurately quote a wire cost - or even so much as name the banks in the path.
