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.
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 :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
These seem like problems that every VPN user encounters on a daily basis, and people on CGNAT often do too
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.
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 :-)
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I read the T&Cs so I know things like "you need an actual address" before committing my money. YMMV.
Just issue your own bill from casenmgreen utilities & power?
I have to say, I am very tempted :-)
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.
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.
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.
There was a very similar story about a month ago: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/45766253
Good luck~
A direct HN link would be better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766253
- 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.)
Sure but linkrot is a thing. Linking with HN avouds this.
Based on username I suspect you are a little biased :)