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

38 points by casenmgreen ↗ HN
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.

11 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 34.1 ms ] thread
killingtime74
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.
yoyo250
Yes, Just like the last bank run at Silicon Valley Bank, don't put all the eggs in one basket.
jrflowers
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.

walletdrainer
Just issue your own bill from casenmgreen utilities & power?
casenmgreen
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.

casenmgreen
Having returned the address to the original address, the warning has gone away and it all seems fine...
tacostakohashi
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.
hecturchi
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
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