I sent ~5k to the USA last year and it took a few hours to reach the USA, then about two weeks to reach the final bank, plus I had to pay transaction fee's on every bank it passed through with an additional wait on the funds being held so they could make sure it wasn't claimed back.
I don't know what the hell you did, but I used to do international money transfers into and out of the US on occasion, and they never took more than a couple of days at worst. For that matter, the last time I sold stock on the LSE and had the funds deposited into one of my US bank accounts - about 18 months ago - I believe the entire set of transactions, from when I spoke with the broker to confirm the sale to when the funds were available to me, took less than 24 hours.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
