Technology makes it quicker, easier and more convenient to do many tasks. Unfortunately, it hasn’t erased human error or the complications of simple mistakes.

Consider what happened to Christian Frey and Clara Stein when they made electronic fund transfers. Frey made a wire transfer to a bank account in India. Stein used an on-line bill payment service to pay her telephone bill.

Neither of them understood what went wrong when the payments seemingly disappeared. In both cases, money was withdrawn as requested from their bank accounts. “It just didn’t show up on the other end,” Stein complained.

She discovered that when she started receiving past due notices from her phone service provider. “The bank sent the phone company proof of payment and even verified the check it issued had been cashed,” she said. “But the phone company insists it doesn’t have the money.”

Frey directed Citibank to send a wire transfer overseas. “When the funds did not appear at the other end, I phoned the bank to recall the money and resend it,” he explained.

But Citibank said there were complications. The wire transfer wasn’t in the account Frey intended – but it hadn’t been returned to Citibank, either. “When I asked about how long it would take to recover my money the bank told me they could make no estimate,” he said.

The challenge was finding the missing money – misplaced in both cases because of mistaken account numbers.

Citibank officials traced the wire transfer to India. But since the account number was wrong it wasn’t posted to the account Frey intended. Unfortunately, the wrong number was a real account, otherwise the wire transfer probably would’ve bounced back, the bank explained.

Both Frey and Stein worked with customer service representatives to recover their money. “I just frustrating,” Stein said. “I thought technology made everything easier. But sometimes it also makes it easier to make mistakes.”

To prevent those mistakes, double check your entries. Before you authorize any payments or transfers, verify the payee or recipient and the full account number. In the case of payments, periodically verify the billing address.

Companies may merge or change locations, and payments can be delayed unless the information is updated. Be especially careful when entering the a payment or transfer. Many consumers have discovered the expense of a misplaced decimal point. It’s easy to overdrawn an account if you unintentionally pay someone $800 rather than $8.00.

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