‘Frustrating’: Local mom claims IRS sent Child Tax Credit money to wrong bank account

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Many parents received their first Child Tax Credit payment on Thursday, but a Charlotte woman told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke the IRS sent her money to the wrong bank account.

Antavia Griffin has two boys, ages 8 and 1. She wanted to see how her Child Tax Credit was coming along, so she went to the IRS website. She showed Action 9 the site. It listed under “processed payments” Thursday’s date, $550, and the last four digits of the bank account the money went to.

“I don’t recognize it (bank account) at all. Never seen it before,” she said.

You may remember that the IRS sent many stimulus payments to the wrong bank accounts, too. In those cases, the agency sent them to accounts tax preparers set up to give customers refunds up front.

Griffin wonders if that’s what happened to her.

“Everybody knows that we’ve been waiting on this for months and months now and, now the time is finally here, and then there’s a mishap,” she said.

Griffin said she called the IRS, but that she, like many, had a hard time getting through.

“I was actually on hold before talking to you for, let me see, at least over an hour,” she told Stoogenke.

Griffin said she finally got a real person, but no answers.

“I’m sure we’re going to get the money, but it can take a while for the bank to reject it. Then it comes back to the IRS, then we have to wait on the check and, by that time, the next payment probably is going to be ready to be issued. So it’s just really frustrating. It really is,” she told Stoogenke.

The IRS told Stoogenke that if you used a “tax pro or an online software provider, yes, … it may happen.”

It went on to say, “We’ve had pretty good cooperation from the tax software industry helping move those into the taxpayers’ real account.”

Stoogenke had a chance to talk on Thursday with a White House official, economist Heather Boushey, so he asked her as well.

“We have stood up this program very very quickly,” she said. “The IRS is doing something they’ve never done before. And we have really emphasized how important this is to American families, but if ... it’s not quite, it isn’t quite working out exactly as you had expected, you can go to childtaxcredit.gov and, there, you can update your information.”

Update your bank account information here.

(WATCH BELOW: Child tax credits to go out Thursday; here is what you need to know)