I changed my address, and TransferWise in two days will empty my account

I have a UK one-man company, through which I work as an IT contractor.

Recently, I changed the address.

TransferWise then KYCed, and requires;

1. A bank statement.

2. A utility bill.

There are no other bank accounts, and it's a one-man company; there's no rental, no phone bill, no water bill - there is a server bill, for the server the company web-site is on, and this TransferWise have refused.

To date, TransferWise stated in their communications that if I could not prove the address, the account would become emit-only; I could not pay money in.

I have just received a message from TransferWise that in two days, all funds in the account will be refunded.

This is wholly different to what was said before, and I'm not clear about what it means : refunded? to whom? me? to those who paid in the funds?

This message from TransferWise has come Friday evening. It seems to me if I now move funds out of the account to other bank accounts, this will not occur over the weekend, and so not until Monday morning.

The deadline issued by TransferWise expires Sunday evening and I have no idea what then will happen.

As it is, I have a personal TransferWise account and transfers to there are immediate, so fortunately I have an emergency escape route.

I note that the address I had on file for the last some years also could not be proved, for exactly the same reasons.

I will now write to TransferWise customer support. I know from experience this is futile - there was an earlier occasion, some years ago, when the account was almost closed, because document upload on the TransferWise site was for me at least broken - but I will do so anyway. I will update the thread here with events.

37 points

・

casenmgreen

・

3 days ago

29 comments

gnabgib ・ 3 days ago

After AWS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34387346), Reddit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35529137), AirBnB (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38524186), Instagram (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44465796), Gnosispay (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44766260), Hetzner (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46050904), and now TransferWise are problematic for you - are you sure it's all these services, and not something done with your account?

  • cromka ・ 3 days ago

    I am a big fan of not ad-hominem-ing people and instead reading into the problem they have, individually. In this case, with Transferwise, it seems that the problem is legitimate.

  • walletdrainer ・ 2 days ago

    These seem like problems that every VPN user encounters on a daily basis, and people on CGNAT often do too

  • csomar ・ 2 days ago

    > are you sure it's all these services

    The OP is only guilty of complaining of minor issues (ie: In AirBnB, it's the currency or something). In his defense, I had issues with all of the services mentioned above; and it's a very common experience across the internet.

    • twohaibei ・ 2 days ago

      I had similar problem. They demanded some documents for KYC, and my "address of operation" did not match "address of registration", or something similar. It took me over a month of writing with their support to even get any info WHAT is wrong, then couple of days on chats with them to straighten it out. Terrible system demanding a lot of my energy and time to get back access to MY MONEY. Because of course they blocked withdrawal/payments from my account.

  • thebruce87m ・ 2 days ago

    > are you sure it's all these services

    User here. Yes, every system is broken once you fall off the happy path and nobody cares.

    • pixl97 ・ 2 days ago

      It's not that nobody cares, it's that governments/regulators typically make it more difficult for people off the beaten path to use financial systems.

  • casenmgreen ・ 2 days ago

    I may be wrong, but it seems to me it may be this happens quite a bit to quite a few people, but I am different in that I get annoyed and write about it. Other people get over it :-)

casenmgreen ・ 2 days ago

I had a chat with Support. I spoke to two people, as I had a first conversation, then after finished remembered I wanted to ask what "all funds in the account will be refunded" meant.

From the first person;

1. TW cannot confirm or deny if standing payments on the account will go through.

2. It is clear I cannot directly or easily produce a suitable document to prove address. The only route I can see is is to contact the accountant, get him to change the trading address with Companyies House (the State registrar), and get that document from him. (I don't normally do this, because digital nomad - I'd be doing it every three months, if I did.)

As it is, I may have a better solution - I have reverted the address to the original address.

Interestingly, this has removed the warning that documentation is needed. I am curious to see what comes next.

From the second person;

1. The message fro TW that "if we don’t hear from you in the next 2 days, we’ll need to refund any money you’ve paid in" in fact means that you will no longer be able to make payments from your account, and any payments you do make will bounce back to you two days afterwards.

It turns out "paid in" means "payments you make to other people".

I would have written "you will not be able to make payments".

I'm not completely convinced about what's actually going on here, because of the strange co-incidence between TW saying "if we don't hear from you in two days" and the Support guy saying "payments come back in two days".

In any event Support here have asserted that payments from the account (to AWS, for example) are expected to stop working as of Sunday evening.

This also means the subject of this post is exactly wrong; it reflects my misunderstanding of TW's meaning.

2. TW cannot confirm or deny if payments into the account will still work.

hecturchi ・ 2 days ago

It must be great to live in a country where you can change your company address without any paper trail whatsoever: no rental contract, no utilities, no entry in the business registry, no acknowledgement from the tax office and nothing you can provide as proof or anything.

I guess the downside is, well, this, specially having thought it is a good idea to rely on Wise as first and only option for business banking, with their reputation...

  • yoyo250 ・ 17 hours ago

    Wise sometimes also suck. In my opinion, I have different addresses

    - my hometown(i can provide the electricity bill, Also the address on my ID card)

    - my rental house(address on my residence card, also my actual address.)

    - Express Station (Packages are only delivered here.)

    - post office (receive letters or international delivery)

    Ok, now Wise ask me for my address, I give my rental address, but the electricity bill is in the landlord's name. Scanned copy of handwritten rental agreements are not valid.

    I give my hometown address. Now I need to offer my bank account details. Sucks. The card was on my rental address.

    The same thing sucked out Wise's customer service.

    When I have ended the anti-money laundering investigation and get my money back, several months passed. And now I lose access to the account. I cannot delete the account and then create a new one.

    Sucks

  • casenmgreen ・ 2 days ago

    It's not quite what it seems.

    I'd picked up a contract in the UK and relocated to the client and created a company for the contract.

    I then tried to get a business bank account with a normal bank, and failed.

    Metro bank took forever and tons of info and then said no.

    (I issued a GDPR data access to see if I could find out anything. After a while, they sent me the same letter twice, arriving on the same day, telling me they had performed the data deletion I had requested.)

    HSBC seemed to lose the application - it disappeared. It had been challenging to make in the first place, the application process was confused and confusing (and that was in the bank with help). I didn't try again (and there wasn't really time to try again - the client was already having to hold off paying me, which is awkward for them).

    I looked at some others, Lloyds and Barclays, and it's been a while so I can't remember why but they didn't pan out.

    TransferWise was my final choice.

    When the contract was done, I left the UK, so no opportunity to open further bank accounts in UK for the business.

tacostakohashi ・ 2 days ago

One-man companies with no bank accounts, leases, phone bills, water bills, and are probably not very lucrative customers, or the target market for this business, especially when they consume the time of multiple customer support people.

  • brudgers ・ 2 days ago

    they consume the time of multiple customer support people

    Indeed for obvious business reasons, there are databases based on the benefits of identifying individuals who habitually engage with customer service services in ways that do so.

    The days when raising hell was a way of winning with customer support are long gone.

  • casenmgreen ・ 2 days ago

    Well, I mean, on a contract I might make 60k GBP gross over six months, and it just sits in the account. The bank seems to get a fair bit of money in its accounts, for it.

    • tacostakohashi ・ 2 days ago

      Maybe it's simplistic, but I imagine their business model revolves making money from transfers, and they're probably don't value having money sit in accounts as much as, say, a bank that's in the money-lending business.

    • kasey_junk ・ 2 days ago

      That’s about 240 GBP at the current spread between what wise is offering and the interbank rate (which is higher than wise is getting on their uk safeguarded accounts).

      So you probably blew through that the minute your account triggered elevated kyc.

jrflowers ・ 3 days ago

Can you describe a scenario where you wait for a bank to mess with your funds in a way that you aren’t clear about and your response is “I’m glad I didn’t move my money while I still had full control of the account”?

If a bank makes vague threats, move your money to a competing bank.

  • tehwebguy ・ 3 days ago

    BTW for people considering this it definitely means making sure you have a secondary account that you can transfer to before you get that first email.

killingtime74 ・ 3 days ago

All I can say is in personal and business I use more than one bank. Systems go down, things like this happen, they raise fees.

  • kjs3 ・ 3 days ago

    I read the T&Cs so I know things like "you need an actual address" before committing my money. YMMV.

  • yoyo250 ・ 17 hours ago

    Yes, Just like the last bank run at Silicon Valley Bank, don't put all the eggs in one basket.

walletdrainer ・ 3 days ago

Just issue your own bill from casenmgreen utilities & power?

  • casenmgreen ・ 2 days ago

    I have to say, I am very tempted :-)

    • walletdrainer ・ 2 days ago

      Given your apparent lack of options, you probably should. If you make it look half-decent, they’ll probably accept it.

      Personally I’d just edit any existing real utility bill, but I understand why most people might not be willing to do that.

      OTOH, depending on your utility provider you might also just be able to go to your account settings and change the information on your bills to match that which you wish to provide Wise with.

Leftium ・ 3 days ago

There was a very similar story about a month ago: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/45766253

Good luck~

  • nrhrjrjrjtntbt ・ 3 days ago

    A direct HN link would be better.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766253

    • Leftium ・ 3 days ago

      - There is a direct HN link at the top of the linked page.

      - It is simple to construct/figure out the direct HN link if the site ever fails to work.

      - I find the linked site easier to read. (Especially on mobile and/or dark mode.)

      • nrhrjrjrjtntbt ・ 3 days ago

        Sure but linkrot is a thing. Linking with HN avouds this.

        Based on username I suspect you are a little biased :)