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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

#171

Post by EdwardDiego »

quantumwoke wrote: post #160
EdwardDiego wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the DNS records, and the Companies Office website, the blogger owns several companies. https://www.vetta.online/ https://aorangieftpos.nz/ https://www.reliance.net.nz/ 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.

Possibly. Would be better if the company name wasn't obscured from the post.

What do you mean possibly?

I checked the DNS records, then the Companies Office register of all companies the blogger is a director and/or shareholder of.

And it's his personal blog considering it's on the domain name of ..

Not sure why you're so certain that it must be a dubious company.

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

#172

Post by paglaghoda »

novok wrote: post #163

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

man didn't even notice it. getting old.

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

#173

Post by usr1106 »

astrange wrote: post #125
hshdhdhehd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more serious stuff in AU there is Justice of the Peace (basically a qualified volunteer but not necessarily a lawyer) who can certify the copy. This can then be scanned and has the JP stamp and signature. Sort of handy as it is a distributed network, so you dont need to queue at a post office and get someone to eye up your docs and fill in a form.

In the US (for financial things) that's called a medallion guarantee and you can walk into a bank and get them to authenticate it. For other things there are notaries public.

Walk into a bank is no longer possible in Finland, regardless of the purpose.

Most branch offices have been closed. The bigger part of the remaining ones are appointment only and getting an appointment can take weeks.

Very few offer cash and similar day to day services without appointment, but only very short hours. People who cannot use cards or the internet will queue in the street.

So like the modern challengers, traditional banks just offer no customer service deserving the name.

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

#174

Post by lmm »

Etheryte wrote: post #155
lmm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We're talking about different things, what you're describing is the opposite problem. The vast majority of the customers are people, not companies, and no information will be released about them.

The post we're discussing is about a company, so I think that's the relevant case. (And for what it's worth the registry I'm talking about also applies to sole proprietors, at least those who've registered for the associated tax treatment).

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

#175

Post by rtpg »

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.

I don't know about the rest of the EU but France just has national ID cards with your address printed on the back! No need for anything fancy there.

In both Australia and Japan there are tax numbers used for corporate identity verification (remember: here we're talking about a Wise account used for a business)

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

#176

Post by csomar »

atmavatar wrote: post #90
FateOfNations wrote: post #78

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.

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…

It did "math out" because these industries heavily lobbied and regulated that starting an alternative is close to impossible. Think about Wise: How many companies out there have the same service? The closest are Revolut and Airwallex. So in a world of 8 billion people and millions of businesses, there are only 3 companies that do the same thing that Wise do. In comparison, there are thousands of banks around the world.

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

#177

Post by csomar »

f33d5173 wrote: post #150
WJW wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#178

Post by degamad »

hpdigidrifter wrote: post #144

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…

> 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.

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

#179

Post by csomar »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #73
monooso wrote: post #67

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.

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?

The only real solution (that many people here in HN hate?) is crypto. USDT/USDC on Eth or Solana and rails to the old systems are much better now. If you are really paranoid (USDT/USDC have a blacklist functionality), then hold Bitcoin and open a derivative short essentially creating a synthetic USD.

Bitcoin doesn't have a blacklist functionality and you can use lightning for full anonymity.

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

#180

Post by csomar »

lxgr wrote: post #26

> 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.

The OP doesn't know this but the first rep. just gave him the blueprint on how to "preserve" and "stamp-approve" his account regardless of whether he has a legitimate business or not. He just needed to get "that" paper and move on. It is a process of document collection not a real verification for business purposes.
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