Consumer complaint received 2024-02-02
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — International money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem — 
Company: TransferWise Ltd (MI)

I wish to lodge a complaint against the currency transmitter Wise.com in XXXX, XXXX. They are holding roughly USD XXXX of my funds. I have repeatedly asked them to refund this money, but to no avail. Their actions have also caused me unnecessary trouble and stress for the last XXXX months. 

Background : I am a dual citizen of the United States and XXXX. I was born, raised, and educated in XXXX. I then moved to XXXX ( having married a XXXX ) and worked as a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ; I became a XXXX citizen in XXXX. Upon retiring, I returned to XXXX  and started an XXXX in XXXX which provides XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX.

I have been using the services of Wise.com for many years, multiple times per month, ever since they started as a company, originally named TransferwiseXXXX. I have regularly transferred both personal funds and business funds from XXXX to the United States : From my personal checking account with the XXXX XXXX  XXXX, I have transferred XXXX XXXX payments and XXXX XXXX XXXX  payments ( after XXXX  tax has been withheld for both ; I register the pre-tax gross amounts as income in my annual federal and state tax filings and receive a US tax credit for the XXXX  withholding tax already paid ) to my personal checking account with XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  branch ). 

From my business checking account with the XXXX XXXX  XXXX, I have transferred payments from my XXXX customers in XXXX to my business checking account with XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

Payments from the above sources are in XXXX XXXX XXXX and therefore need to be converted to US dollars. The personal and company payments represent about XXXX XXXX of my current income. The final XXXX  consists of my US XXXX XXXX XXXX, in US dollars. 

Events : Once every year I receive XXXX  for a textbook XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, now in its XXXX  edition. These XXXX  are paid out in XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX in late XXXX of the following year and have been deposited since XXXX in an otherwise fully dormant personal checking account with XXXX in XXXX; this routine was thus established long before XXXX, when I started my XXXX XXXX XXXX  and opened my business account with XXXX in XXXX. Every year since returning to XXXX, I have XXXX  transferred these XXXX  internally from my personal to my business account with XXXX and then sent them to Wise.com for conversion and transfer to my business account in XXXX  ( even though the XXXX  do not directly fall under the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, they do represent earned income, and I pay income tax on them in Michigan ). 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I inadvertently sent these XXXX payments ( XXXX XXXX ) directly to Wise.com from my XXXX personal account. ( The procedure of sending funds to the Wise.com XXXX account is identical for both my personal and business accounts at XXXX ; the XXXX  number of Wise.com immediately appeared as a payee, and I sent the money to my account with Wise.com, to be forwarded to my business account in XXXX as usual. ) Of course, to Wise.com, this incoming payment was quite understandably regarded as an illicit transfer from an unknown account. ( To avoid making this mistake in the future, I have since instructed my XXXX  in XXXX to deposit future XXXX  in my business account with XXXX. ) Wise.coms reaction was to immediately de-activate my account, without comment. I appealed the decision to their customer service department right away, stating that the suspicious payment was just an unfortunate oversight on my part and that Wise should have simply reached out to me for an explanation. The next day I received an email asking me which of my accounts they should refund the XXXX XXXX to ( along with a small amount [ XXXX XXXX  ] I had just sent them from my business account ). For the sole reason that I can always readily provide the last XXXX digits of my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, I asked them to refund both sums to my personal XXXX  account, which is based on that number, and on XX/XX/XXXX that account received both sums ( but not another still-outstanding personal sum ( XXXX XXXX, a XXXX XXXX XXXX  ) previously sent to them on XX/XX/XXXX for transfer but never received in my personal account in XXXX. Meanwhile, Wise, apparently having had a change of heart following my explanation, sent me a message that my account had been reviewed and re-activated ( they also offered me a free transfer of up to XXXX XXXX, presumably as compensation ). 

With my account re-activated, I re-sent all the funds to Wise, again, for transfer to XXXX  : On XX/XX/XXXX, I lumped together XXXX XXXX [ which I was wrongly assuming was also in the process of being refunded to me ] with the refunded XXXX XXXX, equaling XXXX XXXX  [ here, I unfortunately made a clerical mistake, writing XXXX XXXX instead : Wise contacted me on XX/XX/XXXX to ask which of these figures I wished to transfer, and I responded the larger, XXXX XXXX, and, on XX/XX/XXXX, I sent an additional XXXX XXXX to their XXXX  account to make up that difference. Also on XX/XX/XXXX, I also re-sent the refunded XXXX XXXX in XXXX  ( money that was now in my personal account with XXXX, as a result of their XX/XX/XXXX refund ) to be converted and transferred to my business account in XXXX, naively thinking all of the relevant transfers previously lined up with Wise would still be open and could be completed once Wise got the respective funds back from me. I was apparently wrong in assuming this ; now Wise presumably thought ( they again never provided any rationale ) that I was now scheming to send the XXXX XXXX ( about XXXX XXXX ) in business earnings as personal funds from my personal XXXX account to my business account in XXXX. I was actually just turning them around from the account through which Wise had just sent them back to me ; Wise knew that they were business earnings finally to be forwarded to my business account in XXXX. 

I maintain, in retrospect, that Wise should have automatically refunded the XXXX XXXX XXXX funds directly to their respective source accounts instead of asking me what account I wished to have the refunds directed to ; their asking me to decide what account to send the refunds to led me to believe that at this stage it made no difference, which is why I felt safe in re-sending Wise the refunded money from my XXXX personal account once the refunds had arrived in that account, as mentioned. Wise is surely capable of simply blocking an anomalous transfer and immediately refunding it to the account that sent it, together with an email query. Such a reaction from Wise would certainly have made it clear to me that these attempted transactions had in fact been canceled and that I would need to start over, using appropriate source accounts. 

Wise.com then again de-activated my account, now definitively, with no recourse to appeal. 

I lodged a formal complaint with Wise. I demanded a refund of these funds that I had sent to Wise but never received in my XXXX  accounts or found refunded to my XXXX  accounts : XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ) XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX [ XXXX + the vainly anticipated refund of XXXX ] XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  ( correcting the figure immediately above to XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX  ) Total XXXX XXXX In my complaint I also requested that my account be re-activated and that I be allowed to continue to do business with Wise.com in the same way I had been doing for more than a decade. 

I have sent detailed documentation in XXXX of each of the XXXX transfers above from XXXX XXXX  to Wise.com ( also appended herewith ) and can readily provide the Board with full documentation from my various bank accounts in XXXX and XXXX, if necessary. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received an email from XXXX XXXX, a complaints administrator at Wise, acknowledging receipt of my complaint. The final response to my complaint was to be issued within XXXX calendar days, which would mean the middle of XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I received XXXX XXXX in my personal XXXX account, sent by Wise Payments. This refund was not accompanied by any further information. I emailed XXXX XXXX via the Wise customer service department to acknowledge receipt of the sum and to express my hope that I would soon be receiving the remaining XXXX XXXX and that my account would be reactivated. I did not hear back from Wise. 

My complaint is thus XXXX  : XXXX. Wise overreacted when they received the XXXX XXXX from me on XX/XX/XXXX, that had been sent from account unfamiliar to them. 

As mentioned, to my mind, what they should have done is to contact me for an explanation. My simple and ready explanation would have led them to refund that sum to the account it was sent from. I could then have internally transferred XXXX XXXX  to my business account with the same bank ( XXXX ) and initiated a normal transfer with them from my business account with XXXX in XXXX to my business account in XXXX, just as I had done XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. This is no way to treat a longtime, regular customer. 

XXXX. Wise is still holding XXXX XXXX of my money. As mentioned, I have provided them with indisputable proof in XXXX of my having sent them these funds from my XXXX account. I can provide them similar direct records from all my bank accounts that I have not received this money. Of course, they themselves have full access to any refunding transactions from them to me. They are simply holding roughly XXXX XXXX of my money, without comment. The complaint I lodged with them was slated to be fully reviewed by the middle of XX/XX/XXXX, a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  ago. 

I maintain that Wise should be sanctioned for their draconian overreaction to my mistaken yet good-faith attempt to transfer my XXXX  on XX/XX/XXXX. I would also ask that they reinstate my accounts to enable me to continue to make use of their services. Further, Wise has arrogated some XXXX XXXX of my money and failed to honor my complaint within the promised XXXX calendar days. 

The rash reactions of Wise have caused me considerable stress for more than XXXX months. It is exasperating and upsetting suddenly not to have access to a convenient, familiar, and reasonably priced way to convert and transfer my pension payments and company earnings from XXXX to XXXX. As mentioned, together they represent more than XXXX XXXX  of my monthly income. I was forced to borrow some money from my home equity line of credit to pay some bills on time, owing to the lack of service and even any communication on the part of Wise. I also had to re-learn how to arrange expensive wire transfers from my XXXX  personal and business accounts to my XXXX  accounts. 

In summary : The relationship between Wise.com and myself, as a consumer, is asymmetrical. Wise is a corporation that deals with currency conversions and transfers professionally and on a full-time basis. I use their services only occasionally and incidentally. Wise should therefore be fully prepared to deal with an anomaly like my XX/XX/XXXX transfer. They might be expected, as professionals, to directly return the money I mistakenly sent from a personal account to that same account and remind me via email that all transfers to my business account in XXXX  must come from the business account in XXXX that they have on file for me. Instead, they de-activated my account without comment. When I asked the customer service department why Wise de-activated the account ( as I was still unaware of my mistake ), they brusquely referred me, without further comment, to section XXXX in the contract. I checked the contract, and there is no section XXXX, just a very long section XXXX ( although there are many other sections with subsections, like XXXX, for example ). I had to check my bank accounts to discover my error. The individuals working in their customer service department informed me that they themselves have no insight into operations. If Wise had nipped the problem in the bud, that is, if they had acted professionally, I would have apologized and resubmitted my requested transfer, and my dealings with Wise would have continued unblemished. As it turned out, they proceeded to aggravate the situation, creating a cascade effect with their de-activation then re-activation then de-activation of my account, setting up the series of misunderstandings about refunds and re-submitted funds that led to their definitive termination of my accounts, despite hundreds and hundreds of untarnished transactions carried out to our mutual satisfaction and benefit throughout most of the companys existence. I thus maintain that the blame for this outcome is also asymmetrical. 

It is my hope that the Consumer Financial Protection Board will agree with me and cite Wise.com for erratic and unprofessional treatment of a client and confiscating funds from that client ; the remedies would be for Wise to reinstate my accounts and to refund my money, with an apology and another offer of some free transfers.

Sincerely, Addendum : On XX/XX/XXXX, a full month after the Wise.com complaints department estimated my case should have been resolved, I emailed the customer service department at Wise that I had written a draft complaint against their service, to be sent to the Consumer Financial Protection Board at the end of XXXX business weeks, that is, on XX/XX/XXXX. As a courtesy to Wise, I attached a copy of my draft of the above complaint. 

The next day, early in the morning ( XXXX XXXX ) of XX/XX/XXXX, I received this email from Wise : Individual from ( Wise ) XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX XXXX Hello XXXX, Thank you for your patience. 

Kindly provide your external personal bank account details so we can process the refund : Account holder name : Bank name : XXXX  : Account number : Account currency : Do note that if you provide us with a bank account that holds a different currency to the balances you held, we'll convert it and charge the normal fee. 

Do let us know if you have other questions, we are happy to help!

Regards, The Wise Team XXXX from Wise I responded right away and thanked them for the rapid response. I provided them with all the details about my bank and account. When I hadnt heard from Wise by XX/XX/XXXX, I wrote to inquire why they had emailed me to give the impression that they were going to refund my money, even though they apparently had no intention of doing so. I stated that I would allow them XXXX more XXXX  XXXX  to execute the refund before I lodged my complaint with the CFPB. At the end of that extra week, On XX/XX/XXXX, I had not received any response from Wise.