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

shaun.nz

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

#131

Post by Normal_gaussian »

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.

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

#132

Post by torton »

epistasis wrote: post #8

As a Wise user, only for personal international transactions, I'm very curious to read this! I've had good experiences so far.

As a personal Wise customer, I have a small issue with a name mismatch. It happens every time, I need to submit extra documentation every time, and when I raise the issue with support I get the same response every time - they got the documents and the transfer can go ahead, so there's no problem. They are incapable of the simple act of looking the history and realizing there is an issue. Wise excels at low fees, not at customer support.

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

#134

Post by lmm »

fooey wrote: post #98

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.

> 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.

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

#135

Post by tehwebguy »

Terr_ wrote: post #127
Terr_ wrote: post #70

For more on why banks might drop customers in a seemingly-capricious way: "Debanking (And Debunking)" - https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki... Prior HN discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371476

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 sou…

> Normal people who experience a bank treating them like shit will assume the bank has treated them like shit. However they are wrong.

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

#136

Post by dboreham »

mjcl wrote: post #62
htrp wrote: post #25

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.

Not even corner cases. I worked for a fintech that launched a dda-ish product that had 16 digit account numbers, issued sequentially, with no check digits. At launch there didn't seem to be a CS process for dealing with pretty obvious "customer mistyped account number and sent their money to some else's account." problem.

Feature parity with blockchains.

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

#137

Post by lmm »

Etheryte wrote: post #57
rtpg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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.

> 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.

Why not? In my country the company registry is public, anyone can pay a small fee to get an official certificate of a company's address and company number.

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

#138

Post by Terr_ »

tehwebguy wrote: post #135
Terr_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

> Normal people who experience a bank treating them like shit will assume the bank has treated them like shit. However they are wrong.

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.

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

#139

Post by lmm »

tehwebguy wrote: post #135
Terr_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

> Normal people who experience a bank treating them like shit will assume the bank has treated them like shit. However they are wrong.

Yep. His explanation of the details is somewhat interesting, but his insistence on ascribing all moral responsibility to customers, governments, or random bystanders because none of this could possibly be anyone in the banking industry's fault is infuriating.

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

#140

Post by dboreham »

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.
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