Consumer complaint received 2024-02-08
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement
Company: TransferWise Ltd ()

On the night of Sunday XX/XX/XXXX I was violently assaulted on a bar strip in XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX, robbed of all my belongings, and woke early morning the next day in a public hospital called XXXX XXXX. I found out all the money in my personal and business accounts with Wise had been withdrawn or spent over the course of the night following my assault. Here is the full story below for context : " I went out to an area of XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX called XXXX on the night of Sunday XX/XX/XXXX. At a little past midnight ( local XXXX time ) I was at a bar called XXXX which shows up as XXXX XXXX on my Wise transactions. 

The last transaction I authorized was for XXXXXXXX XXXX and the transaction number was XXXX ( on Wise 's records ). After this I was the target of an organized crime group to assault, steal, and rob innocent people. 

I was violently assaulted outside of the bar by a group of people and they took all my belongings that I had with me at the time. My phone ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) and my wallet which contained my Wise card and my drivers license. XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX 

Not being able to speak the language, I was unable to contact my friends in XXXX or my family back home in XXXX to let them know what was going on or get help translating. I did a XXXX scan in the early morning of Monday XX/XX/XXXX, which revealed a fracture on the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX on my brain which likely resulted from a brain XXXX. See below for my medical records. 

I found out the next day that all of the money from my personal AND business Wise account had been withdrawn or spent while I was on my way to and in the hospital. The reason I say this was clearly an organized effort is that not only were they able to get into my phone but they also had somehow gotten access to my pin to be able to withdraw money and make transactions. They were also familiar enough with Wise to transfer money from one account to the other to take out all of it from the card. They were either trailing me for days prior, used pin readers, were coordinating with the people who worked at the bar that night, or a mix of all of these. 

The people who robbed me made a ton of ATM withdrawals and machine transactions that total almost {$11000.00} USD. This was all of the money that I had for me and my business. 

My friend and business partner who was also in XXXX was worried as he had not heard from me all night and saw that all the money had been taken from our account. He went and filed a missing persons report with the police in the afternoon of XX/XX/XXXX. I will attach it here. 

I personally went and filed a police report myself later in XXXX when I was feeling moderately better. I will also attach it. 

With regards to my medical records. Please make sure these are kept confidential. I did a XXXX and XXXX XXXX Scan on the morning of Monday XX/XX/XXXX. The reports are attached. 
" I spent 4 days in the hospital and got out on XX/XX/XXXX. I reached out to Wise on XX/XX/XXXX to explain what happened and request to have the stolen money refunded. I provided police reports and medical records which evidently show that I was robbed of all the money. 

4 weeks went by and this was their response : " Hello XXXX, Thanks for your patience. 

After reviewing your report, we would require further supporting documentation from your end. 

The police report you provided was lodged by your business associate- XXXX XXXX. 

Since this dispute involves your stolen device, we would require you to lodge a police report of the robbery incidence and provide us a PDF/Jpeg copy of the report. 

Looking forward to hearing from you. 
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Wise " So I went ahead and lodged an additional police report and sent it to them. 

Almost 10 days later they came back with this ( screenshot also attached ) : " Hello XXXX, Thanks for getting in touch. 

We couldn't confirm that the transaction ( s ) you reported was/were unauthorized. 

Per Visa/MasterCard records , the charge ( s ) was/were authorized with your physical card present at the payment terminal and the correct PIN was entered. Such transaction ( s ) is/are not disputable under " No cardholder authorization ''. 

As we couldn't confirm any data points suggesting unauthorized usage of your payment instrument, were unable to refund the charge on this occasion. 

Well continue to keep an eye on your account and make sure it stays safe. 

If you wish to appeal this decision you may reply to this email, stating : I would like to Appeal. Also, please provide additional information that you think might be relevant to your dispute claim. Well review it thoroughly and get back in touch within 15 business days. 

All the best, XXXX Card Disputes Team Wise " I didn't understand how they could label my transactions as authorized when I wasn't the one making them. I asked them for more information about the transactions and made an appeal for my case. They didn't give me any of the information. Instead they came back two weeks later with the exact same vague messaging about being unable to authorize transactions ( screenshot also attached ) : " Hello XXXX, Thanks for getting back to us. 

We performed a supplementary review of your dispute, but couldn't confirm that the transactions you reported were unauthorised. 

The reported transactions were duly approved on your registered device and though the PIN for your card. 

As we couldnt confirm the reported charges as unauthorised, were unable to issue a refund on this occasion. 

Well continue to keep an eye on your account and make sure it stays safe. 

All the best, XXXX Card Disputes Team " After this I called them and demanded to speak to an actual person on the card disputes team because this was the team in charge of making these decisions. I was told that we can not speak to them directly and that we can only go through the support team. So these are the people who decide whether or not I get my {$11000.00} USD back and I can't even speak to them to understand their process, make my case, or ask more information on the fraudulent transactions. 

Eventually, the support agent told me she could open a dispute case with another team. So I went ahead and re-explained my case with even more detail and proof this time. With time stamps of my XXXX scans at the hospital and the fraudulent transactions. 

Right after then froze my card without telling me and I couldn't unfreeze it myself. A week went by and I had to follow up to ask for updates. They got back to me with a message saying that this case was already closed on XX/XX/XXXX even though I opened this case on XX/XX/XXXX. ( screenshot of response attached ) Every time I would write to support in the same email chain, I would get a response from a different person who seemed to have no idea what was going on in the case. Eventually on XX/XX/XXXX I got a response about my actual case. 

" Hello XXXX, Thanks for getting back to us. I apologize for the misunderstanding, let me try to be more elaborate on the case to tackle this misunderstanding. 

I looked at your dispute and former communications thoroughly. I can see that you have already provided the transaction numbers you submitted to dispute, your police reports and medical examination reports before on XXXX, XXXX and XXXX. 

Our team has gone through your case including these reports and came to a conclusion where we sent the email to you on XXXX which I had shared in my previous email. 

I apologize on behalf of my colleague who sent you an email after your phone call to us asking for the same information again. I'm also deeply sorry about what you have gone through. 

However, like I mentioned above, our dispute team reviewed your case in detail and came to the conclusion : We performed a supplementary review of your dispute, but couldn't confirm that the transactions you reported were unauthorized. 
The reported transactions were duly approved on your registered device and though the PIN for your card. 
As we couldnt confirm the reported charges as unauthorized, were unable to issue a refund on this occasion. 
Well continue to keep an eye on your account and make sure it stays safe. 

I hope that helps. Just let me know if you have any other questions or you can check out our Help Centre. 

Sincerely, " They literally copy pasted the response from the previous case and used that as the response for this case. I don't even know who is in charge of these decisions and I have no way of getting in contact with them because of the lack of transparency. 

It is absolutely ridiculous that a company holding funds for their customers does not let them get in touch with anyone other than the support team and every decision is made behind the curtains. There is no way of even getting information of transactions made with the cards which is information that this company should be keeping track of. 

By and all, Wise has acted extremely negligent in allowing my account to be accessed and for ALL the funds to by taken out without my authorization. How is it possible that someone could go in and take all the money out of an account in transactions that are not congruent with normal consumer behavior and there are no red flags raised internally. Not so much as an email asking me if I want to approve these transactions. On top of that, to deny me the information about the fraudulent transactions. This company has no checks and balances in place and even thought it acts as a bank, it has none of the safeguards in place that a bank should have. It also conceals all of it's customer related decisions from the actual customers and hides behind a wall of support agents who are not in charge of making any decisions. 

I demand that Wise refunds me the money that I lost because of their lack of safeguards and transparency. And in general this is very concerning because they have thousands and thousands of customers who store funds with them and are exposed to these threats on a daily basis as well.