Consumer complaint received 2020-07-21
Company: Remitly, Inc.
State: SC
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: International money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2019 I did my first international money transfer through Remitly ( www.remitly.com ) from my XXXX XXXX  to my own bank account in XXXX. Transfer No. : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

Later I received an email from Remitly Customer Service ( service@remitly.com ) on XX/XX/2019 confirming the funds were deposited to my recipient XXXX account in XXXX. 

But upon verification I realized this money was never deposited to this account and opened a complained with Remitly on XX/XX/2019. 

Ever since then I have been continuously trying to resolve this issue with them in all possible means. They were never considerate and responsive. I had great difficulty dealing with them. I have the recorded email communications with me as well. 

They said XXXX transferred the money to some one else because I made a typo of leaving one digit from my recipient account number while initiating the transaction. There was no way for me to realize the typo error as the transaction was showing the last 4 digits and it was correct. And there was no provision provided me to review and confirm the account number and other details of the recipient account other than doing another transaction. 

I explained all these matters to them. They said I made a mistake and so they are not responsible. They never took responsibility of their erroneous system which can't verify and confirm customer credentials before submitting transaction. 

I went with my experience doing other online transactions which I have been doing between many types of accounts maintained and managed through many other types of banks, financial institutions and shops etc. I never had any issue, those providers made sure of that. Many even forgive genuine possible customer error taking the blame on their own systems susceptible of such customer mistakes and improved their systems. 

It was my first transaction through Remitly. They did not even bother to do a security check between the accounts such as doing a dummy transfer ( like other money transfer services do, like in my own experience doing transactions through XXXX etc. ) or matching all customer credentials such as customer name, branch location, address etc. As per them they only match the account number and bank name. Then why are they even taking customer name, address and other details giving customer the wrong idea about the safety of the transactions through them. 

The money was to help my mom in some time sensitive money matters. I had to transfer another amount to help her impacting my financials. 

As per them XXXX made the mistake. Even in that case it is Remitly 's responsibility to compensate the customer first and deal with XXXX retrieving the money. As a customer how am I supposed to know what the transaction process is between the providers. Customer don't have to know who is doing what, other than the promise from Remitly that they will " safely '' take my money to where I want the money to be taken. 

Remitly promised me that they will work on the issue with XXXX and resolve it but I have to be patient as it can take several month. At that time I was not aware where can I complaint about the whole issue and whom to approach. Also was having faith Remitly will fight for their customer interests than washing their hands off. And was waiting to hear from them. They never bothered to give me a status update on this matter and looks like never did anything other than giving me excuses to get rid of me going back to them and getting me tired of following up and eventually giving up. 

Now the company should correct their mistake and compensate me for their irresponsibility and the problems that they caused me on both financial and mental grounds. I'm now unemployed and I need to help my mom to deal with current Covid 19 situations.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation