Consumer complaint received 2020-10-03
Company: TransferWise Ltd
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: International money transfer
Issue: Wrong amount charged or received

Complaint:
My brother was going to send me USD but wanted to receive it in USD and transfer the USD to my US dollar account in XXXX. I did not want to lose on the exchange rate. The USD funds were paid to my XXXX account in USD. In order to transfer the USD to my USD account in XXXX and minimize on foreign exchange issues and transfer fees, I created a Transferwise account as I read that was the best way to transfer USD funds from a US bank to XXXX, by creating an account with Transferwise, Transferwise Inc has a US addressed listed as XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX   NY and it appears to be an affiliation with XXXX XXXX. Within the Tranferwise account, I set up both my XXXX chequing and US dollar savings account so that I have the option of transferring funds either in US or XXXX funds. When I received the USD from brother through XXXX, I then transferred the USD to Transferwise that was set up within the XXXX account. I then logged into Transferwise and requested a transfer in USD to my USD savings account. I paid a fee for the transfer and purposely wanted to receive funds in USD. At it turns out, my bank received the funds in Cad $ through the intermediary bank XXXX and converted to USD to deposit to my USD account. I lost on the exchange rate twice and lost on the exchange. I understand and accept that XXXX would charge a transfer fee and that was not the issue. I emailed and contacted Transferwise and explained the issue and they have not resolved it and insisted that the issue was clearly all a wire transfer fee by the intermediary bank. A wire transfer fee of USDXXXX is ridiculous as i recently was charged a wire transfer fee of USDXXXX  by the same intermediary bank ( XXXX ) on a recent wire transfer to my USD for an amount that was way more than USDXXXX. I am very frustrated.

The transfer was initiated by me through transferwise in the amount of USDXXXX ( i paid a transfer fee, no problem ). Date received by my bank was XXXX in the amount of Cad {$1900.00}. My bank had to convert to USD as the transfer was going into my USD account and the deposit to my account was UDXXXX. The Cad {$1900.00} was after a transfer fee by the intermediary bank XXXX which i have no problem with. It is the conversion rate on both conversions ( intially from USD to Cad $ by XXXX, and then from Cad $ to USD by my bank ) that cost me to lose on the foreign exchange. I received about USDXXXX less I am guessing that it would have been about USDXXXX in wire transfer fees charged by XXXX ( which i accept-this was the fee charged by XXXX on an earlier wire transfer ) and the difference of USDXXXX is the foreign exchange loss. Transferwise refused to accept responsibility and if anything, they should at least investigate and reach out to XXXX to resolve this. They represented that i was going to receive exactly USDXXXX ( less wire transfer fees ) but that is not what happened. I should have at least received USDXXXX assuming wire transfer fees were {$20.00} I know that it is not a large amount to some people but it certainly is a lot to me during Covid. That is an issue that should be resolved between XXXX and Transferwise and I| should not be in the middle of it.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation