A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

There was a time when the general consensus was that treating customers well would result in greater retention, which, in turn, would ultimately prove to be net positive profit-wise over time.

It seems like that changed somewhere around the turn of the century, whereby businesses started to decide that it was better to cut down on customer service, and in some cases, go so far as to ban customers. The first cases of this I recall reading about had to do with Best Buy, and specifically their policy of banning people from their stores who made a lot of returns.

I'm not really sure how it ultimately maths out - i.e., whether it's long-term optimal to drop troublesome customers or merely short-term optimal, and this was primarily taken from the perspective of retail.

As such, I'm sure the math changes a little for subscription services. However, I also recall my prior employer's support activity followed a power law distribution across its clients, so it wouldn't surprise me if a policy to drop particularly noisy clients is a net savings there as well.

That's what you get for the low cost of entry. When most customers are self-signup (and probably low margin) there's no individual responsible for them.

Good in that you never have to speak to a salesperson, bad in that there will be no-one to take care of you if things go sideways.

On one hand, this makes me incredibly sad. It means that all of us, as consumers, agreed we'd rather save a buck than get acceptable service.

On the other hand, as someone who did customer service in my younger years, 95% of calls were PEBKAC, so it's essentially a giant money drain for things of no real concern to you as a company.

I've often wondered how successful it would be to charge $3 or $5 per call, refunding the money in cases said call was needed.

A 9 point HN post shouldn't bring down the server.

Oh, a wise guy, ehe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yscaDkzHqek

Follow up article: why were never using Wordpress again. A hacker news cautionary tale.

Also. Well done wise.com. Only having customers who use Wordpress means no vitality on people posting hate for you.

Is there any accountability for overly conservative KYC? My understanding from the whole debanking thing is no, at least in the US.

Not even corner cases. I worked for a fintech that launched a dda-ish product that had 16 digit account numbers, issued sequentially, with no check digits. At launch there didn't seem to be a CS process for dealing with pretty obvious "customer mistyped account number and sent their money to some else's account." problem.

Chesterson's bureaucracy

That was my first thought as I was reading. Of course, I imagine almost every serious business would be extremely uncomfortable doing something like that. On the other hand, if the alternative is getting your account closed anyway, there's not much to lose.

What’s the difference between that and traditional banking?

Been party to more than a couple situations with large banks who decided that you violated some hidden AML related policy and with zero recourse. You are lucky to even get your money out of those accounts without lengthy litigation.

Might happen more with fintech, but traditional banking does not remotely make you immune to this. Start doing anything interesting not “normal” and you’ll find out the hard way.

Also very curious, as a former Wise user who stopped using them after they demanded impossible KYC requirements (proof of address with address components that simply don't exist for my address, luckily with no money in the account, but didn't budge even when I reached out to support) and then seem to have silently dropped this months later (still not using them - not going to risk that they come back with more bullshit when they have money to hold hostage).

Edit: Someone posted a copy of the article below, and it seems to be a similar issue with no satisfactory resolution.

Likewise, been with them for a few years and am changing countries very often (including NZ like the author). It's making me quite nervous TBH!

I do dozens of transactions every month sending payments to various freelancers. Been doing this for five years and can count the numbers of times I hand problems making payments on one hand - all we're minor and resolved in just a few days.

Same here! I need to know!

Any suggestions for alternatives? I set up an account and tested a transfer to an out-of-country account, just in case I need to leave the US.. It worked painlessly. But recently, I think they closed my account pending more documents.

Also, any suggestions on reasonably secure bank accounts one can hold without citizenship / residency? Swiss?

My blood pressure just went up.