TL;DR: “Wise” froze our account due to “unauthorized activity”. Only after we made a police report against them, did they look into it & unfreeze it! They also transferred our money out without our consent! Now we have lost €13,627.85! “Wise” has USELESS service when things go south. “Wise” didn’t bother rectifying the issue with us even though we’ve made millions $ worth of transactions on their platform. Not a single call-back and all standard template replies that doesn’t help. On the other hand, their competitor Revolut, had a staff-in-charge call me, email me and followed up on my account registration even though I haven’t spent a dime on them. This is your fair warning.
Writing this post to expose the total disregard & non-chalance of “Wise” towards small business aka small-medium enterprises (SMEs) like us. Throwing away our money just like that without any accountability. We hope this will raise awareness amongst the community. Best case scenario is we find many other business that were screwed over by “Wise” with a good case and we all file a class-action lawsuit.
We’ve been using “TransferWise” (what it was called back then) for years before they rebranded to “Wise” – what an irony – without issue for years and it seems like after their rebrand, their focus was no longer on customers but on “security”; just like how social media platforms block exposé posts in the name of “protecting the community”. I guess Wise just wants to keep our money like how these social media platforms want to keep their narrative.
The saga began on 22 Nov 2024. I was overseas. My accounts staff logged in using my user ID & password with my approval – as we’ve been doing for all these years – and suddenly, to the holy “Wise”, it became a sin. From there, they froze our account and our next payment on 25 Nov 2024 was frozen as well – but the amount was deducted from our account!
They said “we’re verifying you” for 2 months already as of this post. And no particular reason was given. It seems like they got angry with us for not listening to them when they say “no other people are allowed to use your account!”. But hey, in this case, I ‘ve already given written consent for them to do it as per email screenshot below.
I told them “yes, please proceed with the payment” via email – black & white – but to no avail.
They have acted against my written consent. Now, this is a crime isn’t it? They can use any small misdemanour to confiscate your money? This is as a good as a scam already.
Our next set of correspondence below. They kept asking me if I’m aware that others are using my account and if yes, why. What a stupid question to ask a business account. Only the owner of the company can make the payments? Never heard of a “finance department” or “accounts department”?
Anyway, they told me to get her onboard as an admin. I did that. However, when she tries to login, her email and handphone no. is already allegedly “registered” on their system so whenever she tries to accept the invite sent by me, she can’t because “Wise” is saying she already has an account, of which she has no knowledge of.
So, my finance staff has started another thread to resolve this. I thought it would be fast, but lo and behold, “Wise” kept giving standard reply templates that doesn’t help. See screenshots below – in order of date of correspondence.
We called them several times but each time their reply to Julie was “sorry we can only speak with the account owner” and when I – the account owner – calls in regarding Julie’s issue, they say “Please get Julie to call us as we need to verify it personally with her”. See the picture? How this is going round in circles?
Eventually, I decided to file a police report against them as they have fraudulently held our money against our will for too long. See screenshot of police report below.
Only after the police report was filed, then did they unfreeze our account. But, only after still screwing up. They still said “your finance staff is not yet added as an authorized user” when she already was for a few days. It shows that “Wise” didn’t even bother to check and just repeated their lazy narratives – see screenshot below.
Finally the communist dictators at “Wise” decided to unfreeze our account and let our payments through without seeing our latest instructions to cancel all outstanding transactions. We informed them via email – black and white – on 13 Dec and 31 Dec 2024. See screenshots below.
Despite our expressly written instructions via email to cancel these 3 transactions, they proceeded to only cancel 2 and proceed with 1. I can’t reconcile why. How did they decide to transfer only 1 and not the other 2? Incredulous. Screenshot of transfer below. 25 Nov 2024 transfer set up, 2 Jan 2025 sent out. Champs.
So now, thanks to “Wise”, we’ve incurred a loss of €13,627.85. They made an illegal transfer of OUR money out despite our express instructions in writing to cancel the transactions. Note that we could not cancel the transfer at that time because our account was frozen. See how they work?
My reply to them below. This is a breach of fiduciary duty which I think tantamounts to criminal breach of trust (CBT)? If it’s a CBT, then I guess a police report will set things in motion.
In spite of my reply above alleging a breach of fiduciary duty, their non-chalant reply came in my inbox below. This shows how little they care about your money and business that throwing away your money is fine.
They didn’t even address the issue of why they sent our money out despite our express disconsent or instructions not to. Right now, we’re sitting on a loss of €13,627.85 and they have gone quiet. I hope a 2nd police report will get justice moving.
Update as at 8 Jan 2025:
Wise replied us with a half-assed apology and with no compensation. Their response time and follow-up have been disappointing. As custodians of our hard-earned money, they could have assigned a staff member to look into our situation and expedite any issues, but no, all we got is automated replies from unnamed staff members in Wise.
We have since posted on Facebook pages to educate people of these and we found that many others have encountered similar issues. Just have to scroll through their instagram and Facebook pages to see how many people have their money held hostage by Wise.
Some screenshots below.
Anyway, we have sinced used that cash we paid to offset our other invoices from our supplier, so we only suffered a cash flow loss, thankfully.
All in all, Wise sucks, don’t use them. This is your fair warning.
