I don't know but I just quickly read the google doc cached version at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YS8FLnSz2eP-nXp7FJR7Gsef... And does this seem like AI automation gone mad?
Some of the support emails read like ChatGPT tbh.
A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
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Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#142Story 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.
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 interes…
With a traditional bank you can walk into a branch and explain the situation to a human. I've had to do this several times with my large US bank, one time when traveling but thankfully to a place where they had a branch. In the end things got fixed up but not without much time and hassle expended.
I get the impression these institutions run ML software that was written by people who knew it would generate false positives but is now run by people who have been told that it is always correct. I say this having seen a bank manager call the group responsible on an internal phone line and them tell the manager that they suspect they (the branch manager) is a fraudster.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would file a "dangerous professional" complaint with the appropriate regulator. (Don't say Wise is completely unregulated. NZ is a civilized country.)
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
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.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#144I'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.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#145Nowhere 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.
Based on the DNS records, and the Companies Office website, the blogger owns several companies.
Business networking, local ISP, card payment solutions, basically. Given the blog posts about cPanel and Outlook, it tracks.
I note that the blogger lives in a small town in the South Island, so likely is focused on the local market.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
ISPs that host illegal content can indeed be outside the risk tolerance of a financial services company. The blog post is very careful to say "one of our companies" and censor the name of it on screenshots so I'll be interested to see what it is.
You can look up the blog author yourself if you're interested. It looks like the typical small NZ "does several things because the local market is so small" kind of business. Local laws here are a bit more strict on hosting content so that seems unlikely, and would the minions at Wise even look into that side of things?
Yep, small is correct, the blogger's companies are all focused on South Canterbury and headquartered in Timaru (for non-Kiwis, 55K people live in South Canterbury, and 29K of them live in Timaru. Massive shit-ton of cows though).
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I believe the business is an ISP.
One of. Also runs card payment systems and business networking consulting. The blogger is focused on his small local market.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#148If anyone opened this and still has it open, please paste the contents here so we can read it.
For years, one of my businesses has been a regular user of Wise (formerly TransferWise). Wise is a financial service that lets you send and receive money across currencies, often at a better rate and lower fee than traditional banks. Sounds great, right? Until it isn’t. This is our story – a sobering, frustrating, and frankly appalling experience that ended with our business and personal accounts being shut down, wit…
Unfortunately copy-pasting the article misses out on the emojis. Gotta go to the site for the full AI slop experience.
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#149At 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.
Wise customer service is amazingly good though.
I'd much prefer to use a company that spends 100% of the time on 80% of customers than one that spends 80% of it's time on 20% of the customers
OP can't even provide proof from the tax office of being at that address, it's an angry rant rather than the whole picture.
Would you go into business with him with nothing but a phone bill as proof?
Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any accountability for overly conservative KYC? My understanding from the whole debanking thing is no, at least in the US.
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 competito…
Closing 1% of accounts instead of .1% of accounts for kyc reasons won't affect your revenue enough to matter to the stock market.