13 ms·

A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

• tecoholic 1y ago
  They might have to follow up with a “why we are never using <hosting> again”
  • hshdhdhehd 1y ago
    A 9 point HN post shouldn't bring down the server.
    • stavros 1y ago
      No amount of HN popularity should bring down a static article, really.
      • koakuma-chan 1y ago
        This
      • nomilk 1y ago
        it's wordpress, so technically not static, although if it was it wouldn't have this resource problem.
        • LambdaComplex 1y ago
          Don't cache plugins exist for WordPress? Or, barring that, wouldn't CloudFlare help?
          • rezonant 1y ago
            They do, but they aren't very good. PHP is very fast, but unfortunately Wordpress is carefully designed to make it very slow.
      • selcuka 1y ago
        > Additionally, a 507 Insufficient Storage error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. They've probably forgotten to rotate web server logs.
        • stavros 1y ago
          It's back up, luckily.
      • technion 1y ago
        You might be shocked just how bad some wordpress sites are. Ive responded to web developers calling 'ddos' on sites that crashed under the Google crawl (before ai crawls misbehaved and made this more of a thing).
        • stavros 1y ago
          Oh, I'm not surprised at all, but there's absolutely no reason at all that static webpages don't at least use a caching plugin, if they insist on using WordPress.
          • toast0 1y ago
            I'm sure some of the caching plugins don't play nice with other plugins or vice versa. I once had to do terrible things to make a WordPress blog work under massive load. Actually not that terrible, I just did some manual caching; grabbed the html, saved it as index.html and made sure the webserver served that (if present) rather than WordPress for the front page, and approximately nobody clicked past the front page (I could have cached some of the article links too) Thankfully, a little while later, I had a good reason to write a rage fueled just barely dynamic replacement of WordPress that met our exact needs with data stored as files. Not as fast as static files, but page generation in < 10 ms (IIRC) is good enough most days. Sadly, I think that blog moved to something slow again, but I no longer support it.
      • 5d41402abc4b 1y ago
        Will a default config of caddy be able to handle this load?
        • stavros 1y ago
          Serving static files? It wouldn't even register.
  • DonHopkins 1y ago
    Oh, a wise guy, ehe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yscaDkzHqek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yscaDkzHqek
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • hank2000 1y ago
    Follow up article: why were never using Wordpress again. A hacker news cautionary tale. Also. Well done wise.com. Only having customers who use Wordpress means no vitality on people posting hate for you.
• Tostino 1y ago
  HN hug of death just FYI
  • nomilk 1y ago
    Not on archive.today or wayback either. (nor indexed by google, afaict)
    • testfrequency 1y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/why-were-never-using-wise-again-a-cautionary-tale-from-a-business-burned/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/...
• bobtheborg 1y ago
  ? "Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, is an English financial technology company focused on global money transfers." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_%28company%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_%28company%29
• nomilk 1y ago
  If anyone opened this and still has it open, please paste the contents here so we can read it.
  • jemmyw 1y ago
    Bah. I posted it but I didn't keep it open on my phone. The tldr: They moved offices, informed wise of a change of address. Wise asked for proof of address. They sent a phone bill. Wise rejected it because the terminology of bills in New Zealand is different to the US (i.e. here bills are usually labelled Tax invoice rather than Bill). Wise support agent also made a barmey suggestion on how to get around it that they didn't follow. Another Wise agent called them back agreeing that the document should be accepted and resubmitted on their behalf. Later the document was rejected again and then their account was closed without any further communication from Wise. Later the author's personal wise account was closed just for being associated with the company.
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
      That tracks with my personal account experience.
    • splix 1y ago
      Ah, I had a similar situation with them. They also closed my personal account immediately after closing the business account. I was really surprised it works that way.
  • stoneman24 1y ago
    The article details the story of a business that tried to change their address in NZ. Thier documents (while correct to NZ) didn’t match the criteria of Wise and then Wise effectively closed the account. The support and appeal process was basically nonexistent and even by the end article it is unclear that the business owner were even able to retrieve the funds in the Wise accounts. Also the author’s personal account with Wise was also closed. I hope this is a very brief overview of the article, which I would encourage people to read. In speaks to the huge imbalance in power and accountability in dealing with some companies
• epistasis 1y ago
  As a Wise user, only for personal international transactions, I'm very curious to read this! I've had good experiences so far.
  • scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
    Same here! I need to know!
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
    Also very curious, as a former Wise user who stopped using them after they demanded impossible KYC requirements (proof of address with address components that simply don't exist for my address, luckily with no money in the account, but didn't budge even when I reached out to support) and then seem to have silently dropped this months later (still not using them - not going to risk that they come back with more bullshit when they have money to hold hostage). Edit: Someone posted a copy of the article below, and it seems to be a similar issue with no satisfactory resolution.
    • dustingetz 1y ago
      what do you use now
      • devnonymous 1y ago
        Not the person you're asking but I had similar CS issues. I still use Wise sparingly but have also started using Revolut. Though, I wouldn't trust either with more money than I can afford to budget for ^life lessons^
      • tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
        Revolut. Despite an uneasy feeling with them since they're a fintech and those can be problematic, I've had nothing but excellent experiences with them. Including customer support in the few cases where I reached out.
  • dimitri-vs 1y ago
• thevillagechief 1y ago
  This was the best thing about Google cache. It's sad they killed it. I really wanted to read this.
  • neilv 1y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/why-were-never-using-wise-again-a-cautionary-tale-from-a-business-burned/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/...
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• tianqi 1y ago
  Has anyone ever just called them 'Wise'? Every single mention is 'Wise (formerly TransferWise)' like it's part of their legal entity name. Their CEO probably introduces himself as 'CEO of Wise (formerly TransferWise)'.
  • koakuma-chan 1y ago
    I've only known it as just Wise
  • yardstick 1y ago
    I call them Wise now, have for at least a year. I first joined years before they renamed. Wise is a lot quicker to say.
  • rmunn 1y ago
    When you change your name and then have to constantly say (formerly OldName), it's a sign of a bad name-change decision. When you change your name to a common word, that does nothing to say what you actually do, it's a sign of a bad name-change decision. When you do both at once...
  • lioeters 1y ago
    It's like Twitter, there was no good reason to change a name with years of trust and reputation. "X" sounds juvenile and stupid, and so does "Wise". I don't understand how it's legal for companies to name themselves as common words like "Alphabet". It's not only confusing, it's arrogant as hell.
    • NullPrefix 1y ago
      Same with Apple
      • rmunn 1y ago
        Apple wasn't a name change, though: that was its name from the beginning. Slightly different situation. (Yes, they changed their name from Apple Computer Company to Apple Inc. once they started making smartphones, but that's not the same because the part of their name that everyone called them, Apple, was kept unchanged). Their logo was always an apple with a bite out of it, their first computer was the Apple I (first one of theirs I ever used was the Apple II)... they really leaned into the name, and made it part of their identity. Which isn't the case with Alphabet or Wise.
• berlinbambi 1y ago
  Are we being trolled. Is this deeply cynical humor. If so I love it
• htrp 1y ago
  It feels like particularly in finance, that startups who disrupt traditional players do so without a full understanding of all the corner cases and none of the regulatory accountability which is why those traditional finance players were so expensive in the first place.
  • wmf 1y ago
    Is there any accountability for overly conservative KYC? My understanding from the whole debanking thing is no, at least in the US.
    • WJW 1y ago
      Kinda depends on how you define "accountability" of course, but rejecting paying customers is usually frowned upon in business. You want your KYC processes to be conservative enough not to get fined, but not so conservative that you lose out on potential revenue. If you're too far off on either side, you either get fined by whatever regulator you fall under, or you get fined by the stock market because your competitors are more profitable.
      • f33d5173 1y ago
        Closing 1% of accounts instead of .1% of accounts for kyc reasons won't affect your revenue enough to matter to the stock market.
        • csomar 1y ago
          If you are closing 1% of your accounts every year, then you'd better be growing at more than 1% per year just to break even. If you don't have an appeal process, you'll eventually restrict everybody: Given enough time, some business/person will eventually do a weird transaction that flags them out.
    • shkkmo 1y ago
      There are international mechanismis for verifying that countries enforce AML stuff like KYC, but no mechanisms for measuring either how effectice it is nor what it's negative effects are.
• quantumwoke 1y ago
  Nowhere in this blog does it mention what the business actually does, which is always a red flag. I've seen plenty of stripe bashing posts on HN that end up with the business being in newsletter scams or adult content.
  • martimarkov 1y ago
    Oh no… god forbid - adult content lol. Yes regardless of the content if the business is legal and they only changed an address that’s not a reason to have this level of shit support and no way to escalate and contact a human…
    • quantumwoke 1y ago
      I don't agree with those policies but it's a possible reason for a financial services business to break a relationship if they discover incidentally that this guys business is breaking the law. Changes the blog post completely and the business info should have been included. As a heuristic, using TransferWise is traditionally associated with Russian money laundering scams.
      • hug 1y ago
        I believe the business is an ISP.
        • EdwardDiego 1y ago
          One of. Also runs card payment systems and business networking consulting. The blogger is focused on his small local market.
  • jemmyw 1y ago
    Looking around it seems its a small ISP / IT consultancy. It doesn't look to be anything shady at all.
    • quantumwoke 1y ago
• lxgr 1y ago
  > a dropdown list of acceptable documents: a lease agreement, rates notice, tax document, utilities bill, or telecommunications bill. It’s baffling to me that these types of (usually unsigned in both the electronic and the ink way, not that the latter would prove anything in a scan) PDFs are still somehow the gold standard for “proofs” of address.
  • Etheryte 1y ago
    In many countries worldwide that's the reasonable best option. A scan of a physically signed piece of paper is no better, anyone could've signed it. So long as there is no global standard for digitally signed documents, that's what we're stuck with, no?
    • rtpg 1y ago
      While you can always outright commit fraud, there are many jurisdictions where there are decently strong forms of proof that go beyond a letter. Things like tax numbers with addresses associated to them, official address registers... hell, a lot of ID cards in many jurisdictions just have your address printed on it! Now, again, fraud is possible, but "I registered my drivers license to a fake address" is a bit of a higher hurdle than "I edited my utility PDF to show the right address". Though there's a bit of a blessing in things like PDFs being easily editable, in that many badly organized criminals will likely do it haphazardly, leading to messy metadata, or even more amateur hour stuff around just having the font be wrong or the like. More opportunities for a fraudster to trip up, so to speak.
      • Etheryte 1y ago
        In countries where you do have e.g. tax numbers associated with addresses no government agency is going to give it to a random private company. I've lived in many countries both in the EU and outside of it and I can think of only a few countries where you actually could do something better than a pdf — and they use digital signatures.
        • 1y ago
• Etheryte 1y ago
  I'm not really sure what the author expected. If you're in KYC and ask to speak to a manager when your document gets rejected, you're going to have a bad time. The person processing your documents can't give you leeway even if they wanted to, they have legal requirements and a process they must follow.
  • gruez 1y ago
    That makes sense if you're trying to use a costco membership card to board an international flight, but nitpicking over telecommunications "bill" vs "invoice" seems exactly the type of ambiguity that's worth escalating over?
  • jemmyw 1y ago
    So what do you do when the process has a problem? The document that your country issues that is valid and meets the KYC legal requirement but has a title that the internal process rejects? You need to speak to someone who can say "this meets the legal requirement but our process is bunk"
• more_corn 1y ago
  This would have been a good page to archive before hugging it to death.
• Kwpolska 1y ago
  Story as old as time. Fintechs may be cheaper or have a cooler app, but if you ever stray off the happy path, you can kiss your account and/or money goodbye.
  • phil21 1y ago
    What’s the difference between that and traditional banking? Been party to more than a couple situations with large banks who decided that you violated some hidden AML related policy and with zero recourse. You are lucky to even get your money out of those accounts without lengthy litigation. Might happen more with fintech, but traditional banking does not remotely make you immune to this. Start doing anything interesting not “normal” and you’ll find out the hard way.
    • Kwpolska 1y ago
      Banks usually have government oversight and legal obligations to customers. A fintech might have neither, it may also be doing business from some other country where it is not possible for you to make use of the government guarantees, or it may be hard to sue the fintech.
      • phil21 1y ago
        When it comes to AML/KYC you get effectively zero government guarantees. It’s almost the opposite. I agree in the sense of FDIC insurance and being nominally operating under the banking regulatory system - but those typically offer exactly zero protection to a whole category of not-crimes. A bank can decide you are suspicious and simply freeze your accounts indefinitely - and stonewall you at the customer service level. It’s not like they are required by any law to respond to you or anything like that. There is likely more recourse if you have enough funds worth perusing legal action to its final conclusion - if you win then you can be more assured the bank will exist six years later when your judgement finally hits. Enjoy paying those legal bills though. Having witnessed this happen and seen six figure losses due to absolutely zero crime being committed, I basically operate under the mental model that any money within a bank or financial institution is their money and not yours.
• djmips 1y ago
  I don't know but I just quickly read the google doc cached version at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YS8FLnSz2eP-nXp7FJR7GsefU9Xzf6BS8JlUI60AFPw/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YS8FLnSz2eP-nXp7FJR7Gsef... And does this seem like AI automation gone mad?
  • justin66 1y ago
    No, this seems like the kind of madness a human bureaucracy is fully capable of without the use of advanced computing.
  • EdwardDiego 1y ago
    Some of the support emails read like ChatGPT tbh.
• testfrequency 1y ago
  Is this site hosted on AWS??
• arjie 1y ago
  Jesus Christ, what a nightmare. I've used Wise quite a bit and was blocked as well, though I'm not entirely sure what I did to get released. I was stuck in a place where I had to login to do something but it wouldn't let me log in. I told a friend of mine who managed to find me a page where I could finally get customer support without being logged in. In my case, it was totally my fault because I foolishly used Wise on my work email. Why would I even do that? It did start this half-Kafkaesque nightmare but I managed to eventually get the account back. I'd compounded the problems by also trying to make a new account so I could get customer support and promptly ended up being banned for trying a duplicate account. Fantastic. But at least you know there is some flow that can get you out of this temporarily restricted state - which seems far less severe than the flow they got stuck in. Being unable to actually get their money out seems crazy. I would have rented the damned WeWork and been done with it to be honest. I have an archived copy here if you want to see https://archive.roshangeorge.dev/archive/1761866967.0412/index.html https://archive.roshangeorge.dev/archive/1761866967.0412/ind... (hopefully the Cloudflare cache isn't misconfigured) EDIT: The Wayback Machine has a copy as well, so you don't need mine https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/why-were-never-using-wise-again-a-cautionary-tale-from-a-business-burned/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/...
• ntSean 1y ago
  I feel as though the whole story isn't here, as there's one key detail that seems suspect from Wise's email: "Additionally, the reason behind our decision is because your activities exceed our risk tolerance." It seems as though Wise had noticed payment patterns that seemed outside of what Wise is comfortable facilitating. I hope the author can get their funds, but this behaviour is consistent with all banking services.
  • wmf 1y ago
    If you do something wrong they say "your activities exceed our risk tolerance". If they make a mistake they say... "your activities exceed our risk tolerance". It's legal boilerplate that covers all possible situations.
  • SuperNinKenDo 1y ago
    Probable just boilerplate. Both parts of the statement can be read so many ways as to be effectively meaningless.
• tech-ninja 1y ago
  I've had good experiences with Wise but jesus this is a nightmare, it looks like their customer service is crooked. It's a shame that such a great company can be so inflexible and let this type of situations fly.
  • Johnny555 1y ago
    I don't think their customer service is crooked, but their customer service is tailored to making sure they meet the exact letter of the laws and regulations they operate under and if it means they lose customers, that's better than a large fine (or whatever the penalty is)
  • stackskipton 1y ago
    Most fintech customer service is cooked. If someone is doing X cheaper, it's likely because they are cutting costs somewhere and customer service is easy place to do it.
• jhancock 1y ago
  New Zealand banks are horrible. If they made it easy to hold USD and/or forex/fees on international card charges were reasonable, Wise wouldn't be needed in most cases. NZ banks also have no depositor protection. No equivalent of the US FDIC. Note below from 'jemmyw depositor protection added the past couple months.
  • jemmyw 1y ago
    We do now have depositor protection: https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/dcs https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/dcs
    • jhancock 1y ago
      thanks for the good news. It does exclude foreign currency accounts.
  • nucleardog 1y ago
    > If they made it easy to hold USD and/or forex/fees on international card charges were reasonable, Wise wouldn't be needed in most cases. Yeah, if the banks could provide a service similar to Wise I'd happily use a bank. My bank wanted ~$800/mo in foreign exchange fees for what I'm doing. Wise charges me ~$100/mo. That's, what, 700% more fees? I'm saving $8.5k/yr. Even if Wise imploded tomorrow and I lost the cash I have in there I'm pretty sure after this long I'm still ahead versus having used my bank all along. And there are a lot of value-adds on top. I can get a Visa card that lets me pay directly in the foreign currency instead of paying the exchange fee twice. This was a whole separate expensive/specialty product from my bank. I can send electronic transfers (through Canada's Interac e-Transfer service) that exceed what a local bank will provide even to my business account and completely avoid the need for additional services/hacks/fees/etc. This is, apparently, "impossible and not supported by Interac" according to multiple banks I've talked to, the business rep, etc. Long story short... I agree. Wise only exists because banks are kinda terrible at this. If the banks sucked less, few people would bother with the friction of the additional account.
• merek 1y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/why-were-never-using-wise-again-a-cautionary-tale-from-a-business-burned/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/...
• monooso 1y ago
  I had a very similar experience with Wise recently. I finally managed to find a document they deemed acceptable (at the fifth attempt) the day before the deadline. At no point did I receive a clear explanation as to why a document was rejected. After the second rejection I hastily transferred all of my business funds to other accounts, and have no intention of returning.
  • hn_acc1 1y ago
    Any suggestions for alternatives? I set up an account and tested a transfer to an out-of-country account, just in case I need to leave the US.. It worked painlessly. But recently, I think they closed my account pending more documents. Also, any suggestions on reasonably secure bank accounts one can hold without citizenship / residency? Swiss?
    • marcus_holmes 1y ago
      I would suggest Revolut, but my experience with them has been similar to Wise. I have a locked Revolut account with funds in it that I can't access because I moved address.
      • ttoinou 1y ago
        Do you think you'll eventually get your money back ? I got my funds locked up in a neobank once and it tooks weeks to get it back and there was almost no support available
        • marcus_holmes 1y ago
          I think so, but I have to jump through a few hoops first and that's been painful.
    • danhorner 1y ago
      xe.com is competitive with wise rates and answers the phone. My KYC/AML journey was brief and they came through within their stated timeframe. However all of the online companies sell the happy path and your experience will be diminished the farther you deviate from it. The right answer may be for a business to maintain a second-source in this as in all critical supplier relationships.
• Max-Ganz-II 1y ago
  Back in early 2022, a little after the war started, TransferWise blocked transfer (i.e. donation) to the account run by the National Bank of Ukraine for support of the Ukrainian military. I have and never will forgive them for this.
  • cpncrunch 1y ago
    Looks like it is probably against their acceptable use policy: 1.2.3 Other restricted activities c. Weaponry, military and semi-military goods and services. Weapons (including weapons of historic significance), military software, or any other goods or services intended for military use.
  • jesterson 1y ago
    > I have and never will forgive them for this. Ukraine is well known money laundering machine. Before the conflict started it was a well known fact and many banks didn't want to work with transfers to Ukraine. I am sure TransferWise shared similar risk model.
    • bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
      Everything you say might be technically true. But if you look at the bigger picture, Ukraine has been invaded and occupied by a bigger countries which buys western banks to do it's money laundering through. Now is not the time to be discipling. Justice is more than just following laws.
      • cjs_ac 1y ago
        Yes, but that's a matter to be settled in a court. Banks and other financial institutions have no business deciding what's just; they just follow the regulations given to them by governments and the courts.
        • Max-Ganz-II 1y ago
          Russia invaded Ukraine, inflicting untold horror, and Russia is a threat to Europe. In the circumstances of early 2022, I would have expected a way to be found, in the knowledge that such an action - telescope held to blind eye - would be condoned.
• Terr_ 1y ago
  For more on why banks might drop customers in a seemingly-capricious way: "Debanking (And Debunking)" - https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunking/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki... Prior HN discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371476
  • Terr_ 1y ago
    Since it is looooong (even by my aging standards), an excerpt: > Many regular people who get the [bank's] offboarding letter are confused and upset. Most people who get this letter are insufficiently expert in the financial system to understand what is going on. Many of them are (perhaps sensibly) enraged that the bank seems reluctant to offer answers. If they successfully pry answers out of the bank, the answers sound like nonsense or change constantly. > Here, advocates often say that banks lack fundamental humanity, regard for their customers, or simple competence. I’d tell them that is neither here nor there, but the challenges described in Seeing like a Bank drive far more of this than malice, apathy, or incompetence as such. It is a systems issue. [...] > Very soon after making the decision to close your account the bank does not know specifically why it chose to close your account. > This strikes many people as Kafkaesque. (Me, too!) It is the long-standing practice of banking in the U.S. and allied countries. It is downstream of laws passed by duly elected representatives. It was not capriciously developed as a political tool in the last few years. (We’ll get to those.)
    • tehwebguy 1y ago
      > Normal people who experience a bank treating them like shit will assume the bank has treated them like shit. However they are wrong.
      • Terr_ 1y ago
        When it's not actually a quote, you might want to present it a little differently. Especially when nobody can tell that its fake at a glance. The guy isn't arguing that the outcome is sane or deserved, but rather than most victims mis-identify the motives and causes.
• ttoinou 1y ago
  How can the business gets its money back ?
  • wmf 1y ago
    I would file a "dangerous professional" complaint with the appropriate regulator. (Don't say Wise is completely unregulated. NZ is a civilized country.)
    • ttoinou 1y ago
      Maybe that would only work if they held New Zealand dollars ? But not if they held USD or EUR or another currency outside of NZ jurisdiction
      • EdwardDiego 1y ago
        Wise will need to have a corporate presence here to operate here, so depending on the amount (whether it be USD or EUR or NZD), this business can take them to the Disputes Tribunal or if >$30K (NZD), the district court.
• nerdralph 1y ago
  I had problems with Wise too. Here in Canada there at least is some federal regulation for money service providers.
• pbarry25 1y ago
  There was a video game written about this scenario... 38 years ago! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)
  • hshdhdhehd 1y ago
    This is my fantasy to create computer games to simulate life absurdities.
  • throwaway89201 1y ago
    My blood pressure just went up.
  • thenthenthen 1y ago
    Papers, Please!
• FateOfNations 1y ago
  At some point customer service died. Businesses of seem to no longer be interested in dealing with customers. Good customers come in all shapes and sizes, and often don't exactly fit a cookie cutter. It's frustrating to see businesses just cut and run the moment something becomes a problem that needs more than a series of pre-scripted responses to be resolved.
  • lmz 1y ago
    That's what you get for the low cost of entry. When most customers are self-signup (and probably low margin) there's no individual responsible for them. Good in that you never have to speak to a salesperson, bad in that there will be no-one to take care of you if things go sideways.
    • Normal_gaussian 1y ago
      Yes. I think that is a reasonable point. When cost of retention exceeds the cost of acquisition.
  • atmavatar 1y ago
    There was a time when the general consensus was that treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time. It seems like that changed somewhere around the turn of the century, whereby businesses started to decide that it was better to cut down on customer service, and in some cases, go so far as to ban customers. The first cases of this I recall reading about had to do with Best Buy, and specifically their policy of banning people from their stores who made a lot of returns. I'm not really sure how it ultimately maths out - i.e., whether it's long-term optimal to drop troublesome customers or merely short-term optimal, and this was primarily taken from the perspective of retail. As such, I'm sure the math changes a little for subscription services. However, I also recall my prior employer's support activity followed a power law distribution across its clients, so it wouldn't surprise me if a policy to drop particularly noisy clients is a net savings there as well.
    • 1y ago
• antisol 1y ago
  So this is my word of warning: Don’t put all your eggs in the Wise basket. You've taken the wrong message away from this. The lesson you should have learned here is: Don't put all your eggs in any one basket. If you are relying on a single provider for some critical business function, then your business is at risk. Period. I don't care how long you've been working with them and how nice their current sales support rep is. Things change. People leave. Companies get bought by other companies and restructured. If you're relying on any single one for anything mission-critical, that's an existential risk. I agree that your wise story is ludicrous and terrible and hilarious. I particularly love how your bill was rejected because it was labelled as a "Tax Invoice" (we have the same requirement here in AU). But TBH this is pretty typical of online services these days, and you should have expected this to happen. Google will happily lock you out of your account for no real reason and give opaque reasons why they won't unlock it. I've seen cases of this happening to google employees. Paypal are notorious for freezing funds during product launches. IMO there should be regulations requiring businesses to have a way for customers to speak to an actual human with decision-making powers. If I was you, I'd be taking legal action against wise and complaining to the government department responsible for regulating these things.
• spelk 1y ago
  Not too long ago, I transferred the equivalent of $12 USD from a Fintech chequing account and immediately had my Wise account flagged for sanctions. I had to spend 2 hours drafting and collecting documentation that I was indeed, not a sanctioned entity.
• ceroxylon 1y ago
  I can't prove it, but from interacting with 'support' teams who are clearly middle-people working with a clunky AI and accepting its output as absolute, that would be my first guess.
• zhivota 1y ago
  The right solution here is to take the telecom tax invoice, edit it in a PDF editor to say Telecom bill, and send it back. The process is stupid enough that this will work 95% of the time. Is it fraud? No, not really, I'd argue. You're just conforming the document to an arbitrary standard, but all the relevant details are factual, not fraudulent.
  • thedanbob 1y ago
    That was my first thought as I was reading. Of course, I imagine almost every serious business would be extremely uncomfortable doing something like that. On the other hand, if the alternative is getting your account closed anyway, there's not much to lose.
  • hshdhdhehd 1y ago
    It is misrepresentation unless you tell them you doctored it.
  • tedeh 1y ago
    I can confirm that this is the exact method recommended in forums where people and businesses that meet adversity from banks on a daily basis (most of the time for completely legitimate businesses, sometimes not) congregate to share advice. The point is to feed the compliance critters exactly what they want so they can tick their boxes without sticking their necks out.
  • gck1 1y ago
    In my country, there is no single document that shows my name and address that is acceptable as a document for address verification in many western fintech applications. If you're renting, bills will arrive in the name of the owner, even though I personally pay them each month. We don't really do lease agreements either, except for very rare circumstances. If you own a property, you could go to the public registry, then translate that, notarize and _maybe_ it will work. But I don't own any property. We don't even get a PDF for the bills, it's just a HTML table with a few lines of CSS. So I simply change the owner's name to mine in that table, save as PDF and send that. Never failed. And at that point, why even have this process at all?
• fooey 1y ago
  Today, in people who discover things that aren't banks don't act like banks Tomorrow we'll have a double header featuring people who discover things that aren't hotels don't act like hotels and things that aren't taxis don't act like taxis. If your business relies on the less-regulated "alternative" you're going to get burned eventually.
  • hshdhdhehd 1y ago
    Banks famously never have issues like this.
    • devnonymous 1y ago
      In most (all ?) countries banks are regulated and customers have recourse to some sort of banking ombudsman for this sort of thing.
      • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        Not if it's AML stuff. In those cases neither the banks or regulators are your friends.
  • fragmede 1y ago
    > things that aren't taxis don't act like taxis. Unfortunately, this is still a good thing. As recently as a few months ago, I was in Las Vegas. The cabbie didn't know where to go, I had to direct them using Google maps from my phone, their credit card machine mysteriously wasn't working, and they didn't have change for cash because they "just got on shift". Seriously, all three in one ride? Don't blame me that it was Uber/Lyft for the rest of my visif. I'll take an eventual possibility of getting burned somehow over a repeat of negative taxi experiences.
  • lmm 1y ago
    > Today, in people who discover things that aren't banks don't act like banks On the contrary, this is a case where Wise is acting exactly like a bank.
• sigmar 1y ago
  >A bit more back and forth… then the call was disconnected. who disconnected it? were you yelling at support? this seems relevant and you just put "yadda yadda... the call was disconnected" (not to defend Wise, just curious what happened there) >This isn’t just poor service — it’s unacceptable. meaningless LLM-addendums don't improve your blogpost
  • pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    It's relatively common IME if you have a hard question or unusual request. Presumably it's going to affect the support person's metrics so they 'accidentally' drop you. Or, if there are targets then it might even be policy. I've been on calls where it was 30 minute waiting to get answered, you ask for what you need, they put you on hold (or 'transfer' you), then the call drops. They don't ring back. Telecoms companies in UK seem to have the worst communications, terrible line quality on support calls. I just assume people then don't complain because it's so hard to. The ombudsman is next to useless - you have to be without service for something like 6 weeks before they'll get out of bed.
  • mlyle 1y ago
    You've never had the experience of having a somewhat challenging / unusual request result in an agent abruptly dropping the call? They can figure out pretty quickly that A) it's going to be hard to help you, and B) you're going to suck a lot of their time, and C) their poor luck of getting your call is going to make them look worse to their management. I had a sequence of this happening three times with a utility. Unfortunately, it's the fourth agent who actually helped me that got yelled at, at no fault of her own. But I was pretty pissed at that point.
• withinrafael 1y ago
  I got the same notification, US business owner here. In my case, I did not change my address (or anything else). But I suspect their system is regularly looking for work and can't handle DBAs well. To avoid this exact scenario, I was on their butts and uploaded every document I had. Eventually I was escalated and they did something, but I still can't enable their APR option due to some error somewhere. No one seems to know what. I'm very concerned one day I'll wake up to the same fate as the author. It's a shame because I really love using the Wise website, app, payment system, and even the physical card (esp. in Japan). Happy to work with anyone over there if they read this and want to dig in.
• dgudkov 1y ago
  We were burned by Wise as well when they suddenly moved our business account to another partner bank in the US and that of course changed our account number. The account was registered in dozens of procurement systems of our enterprise customers and it took us several months and a lot of pain to resume receiving payments from those customers who kept sending them to the now wrong account. I can never imagine a "traditional" bank doing that. After that, we transferred the bulk of our funds back to a "traditional" bank and now never use Wise as the main business account. We now use it mostly for operational expenses. Wise still has something to learn about banking business.
• nimbius 1y ago
  it sounds like youre a victim of SAR (suspicious activity report) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report in most western countries it is illegal to disclose the nature of the SAR. they will simply end your account with no recourse.
• peanut-walrus 1y ago
  The KYC/AML dance is really annoying. The actual bad guys know exactly what they need to pass all the checks, while regular people, as in this case, often get caught in the wheels. Banks or fintechs rarely have the kind of investigative powers they would need to actually find the criminals using them, nor do they really want to spend their time playing police. So anything even remotely suspicious? You're now out of our risk appetite, bye. For the actual criminals - if you're already doing crime, what's a little document forgery on top of that? It's about time we accepted this fact and allowed money transfers, payments and banking to be neutral infrastructure.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    Are you American? If so, you should lobby for the end of the Bank Secrecy Act which is upstream of all of this.
  • nucleardog 1y ago
    Only slightly related, but it gave me a laugh-- Wise needed beneficial ownership documentation for my business account. Presumably this was part of the whole KYC/AML/etc dance. There's no standard form I could find for this, document to get out of the government service portal, or anything else. I finally just fired up a word processor and put together a single page document: To whom in may concern, Below is an accounting of all individuals who, directly or indirectly, through any contract, arrangement, understanding or otherwise own equity interests in 12341234 CANADA LTD. NAME DOB Ownership nucleardog 1970-01-01 100% I hereby certify that the above information is correct as of Dec 31, 2037. Nucleardog President 12341234 CANADA LTD No notes. They accepted it immediately and the account opening moved forward. Like... wat? Why was I stressed about this? (I have since written myself many things things like this, e.g., salary verification letters. Always gives me a chuckle and feels like a weird superpower I've gained by paying the $250 or whatever to incorporate.) If I were someone that set up forged accounts and stuff professionally this would've been absolutely _nothing_ to bypass. As someone legit doing this _once_ for _a_ business, it definitely took a lot more research and thought that it really should have.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• NullPrefix 1y ago
  Your error was arguing about the tax invoice being a bill. Corporations don't like when you argue. Don't matter if you are right or wrong.
• Normal_gaussian 1y ago
  In the UK I have a single person Ltd. I use a virtual office as my registered address (a standard practice) and my home as my trading address. My UK banks and insurance all list my trading address (knowingly - that is the one they want) and my regular bills are personal, not under the company. When wise ran a KYC, we had quite the confusing back and forth. The only documents I had which they nearly liked were from HMRC - but they didn't like that they were > 1year old. In the end I rang HMRC and asked for any paper document they could send me with their logo, my company name, my trading address and my registered address on it... the lovely HMRC rep worked out which real document I could trigger. A complete waste of her time obviously.
• sixhobbits 1y ago
  I've had similar from Wise and it's partly their fault but partly also not. If you do anything suspicious, they have to do this and they're not allowed to tell you why. See https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunking/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
• dboreham 1y ago
  I have a personal Wise account as do several family members. I've had a few odd things happen with their debit cards, and actually (eventually received some reasonably sane customer support via email). Otherwise no problems. That said, when I was opening the account another family member with a history in fintech said "you know that's not a bank, right?". Accordingly I've never kept a large balance there.
• hpdigidrifter 1y ago
  I've personally found wise to be more than helpful and I've changed addresses across continents, to far more red flag jurisdictions than my native Australia So while I feel for the person they seem very unwilling to meet a provider in the middle, is it not fair to question why this business pays no electricity or either owns/rent the property? This is very basic stuff for a business to have. Nothing more than a phone bill at that address is bit iffy. From a pure risk perspective buying a $2 sim card and putting whatever address you want in online then sending someone the PDF saying that's where we are is not hard to do, so maybe not worth having your business if you can't provide anything else to satisfy their worries? There's plenty of banks that have to service you by law, go to them, and pay the far higher costs.
  • degamad 1y ago
    > is it not fair to question why this business pays no electricity or either owns/rent the property? It's fair to question, and it is addressed in the article. They're a subsidiary, and the utilities and rent are in the parent company's name. Other relevant documents are in this company's name, but have a PO Box address because their street address does not have a mail service. > There's plenty of banks that have to service you by law, go to them, and pay the far higher costs. I think the "we don't want to service you" angle can be addressed by using alternative bank. However, "we've restricted all your abilities to contact us" is an unreasonable step, and prevents actually refunding the former customer the money they're owed. So that latter action is still an unreasonable step on Wise's part.
• robocat 1y ago
  My only issue with a personal Wise account is that it was unobvious to me that they charge 1.75% on ATM withdrawals (over NZD350). I'm not sure if using Wise actually saves money otherwise - but it mostly works fine. The one technical issue I've hit in the US was a bowser asking for my ZIP code which it couldn't verify so I couldn't use that gas station.
• novok 1y ago
  This was very obviously written with ChatGPT. The structure, emojis, emdashes and contrasting sentences. Surprised nobody is calling it out. IMO save us time and just give us the original short version you wrote to ChatGPT
  • paglaghoda 1y ago
    man didn't even notice it. getting old.
  • platevoltage 1y ago
    "Let's Recap" is a dead giveaway.
  • hyperbolablabla 1y ago
    "Their answer?" I absolutely loathe gpt's structure
    • bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
      I don't know the name of this rhetorical device, but I assure you it that using it is older than gpt
      • marginalia_nu 1y ago
        Yeah, a version of the construct famously ends the Albert Einstein copypasta, which is at least 10 years old at this point. Though I think stylistically it's considered bad writing, which is likely why it's so jarring when it starts to crop up in ChatGPT-generated text.
    • Terretta 1y ago
      Just yesterday, a coworker used "And the best part?" while verbally relating a story. ChatGPT must have trained on something. Only things I can think of are the many teen angst TV series with spoken "inner monologue" voice over, and narratives from people who are their own main character.
  • 1y ago
• lemonia993 1y ago
  [flagged]
• rsanek 1y ago
  Man, that background animation is really distracting.
  • aendruk 1y ago
    I couldn’t read with it and filtered it out with uBlock Origin: shaun.nz##.blogig-background-animation
• kevdoran 1y ago
  I read this yesterday and thought "only a matter of time for us". We use Wise twice a month and have for a couple of years. Today I was surprised to find out that matter of time was 12 hours, as I logged in and see: "We've temporarily blocked your Wise account. We're missing important information from you." When I click the link, it says: "That address doesn't look right" and shows my business address. That is right. There's no way to contact nor do anything other than change the address. I of course don't want to change the address, because it's my business address. Lol.
• atmosx 1y ago
  Can someone propose a similar alternative? All these services seem to suffer greatly from the same kind of “poor support”.
• kotaKat 1y ago
  It’s like when I updated my Stripe account to be used with my new shiny Ko-Fi account I opened, like Ko-Fi suggest I could do… and then Stripe immediately closed my account for linking it to Ko-Fi because they suddenly considered it crowdfunding. No recourse, just “fuck off to the void forever”.
• pshirshov 1y ago
  I've opened a business account there back in 2018 and used it for a couple of years up to the moment when they asked me to "update details" or so in the middle of a routine transfer. I've sent them what they wanted and they made the transfer with a day of delay, but the experience was too humiliating and alerting. Revolut might be a bit better but again, you don't owe your money, they may ask for random stuff (a selfie, a scan of your passport, a PoA) randomly at any time, they may arbitrarily block you from accessing your money when your passport expired and you haven't received a new one yet, or when you landed in a new country and their heuristic thinks it's not you, so you cant't even buy some food or get a taxi. Even if you pay their Ultra subscription (which I do) it's hard to speak with someone who may make decisions and I've experienced some comical situations like "we can't figure out which one of your cards was used for this attempted transaction, we can't find it in our database, we will reissue all your cards"
• hartymagic 1y ago
  I had Wise ask for my tax documents when I was in South America! I couldn’t access any documentation so I just ignored that account and used another one. That is the second time I have refused to use Wise. The first, they closed my account because I sent some money to my son and referenced a trust a/c. Ai carumba! Why do they make it so difficult when they only exist for overseas functions?
• ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
  Wise is not a bank, and is not licensed as a bank. They should not be treated as a bank.