Today the rate on World Remit was 67.96 peso to the pound I had to use them again at the weekend as my son was ill and then again today because in all the panic at the weekend I forgot to do my regular Paypal and now the support money was going to be late. I had to call them at the weekend because they really were slow at getting round to processing transfers, the process is they acknowledge the basic transaction immediately, but a human operator has to do the actual international transfer and it is only when you get the second confirmation email that the money is available for pickup. I also complained to them that the final page of the transaction was misleading as it appears to imply that the money can be picked up from any one of many cash outlets even though they make you choose one specifically at the start, this is NOT the case the money will only be paid out at the company you specify at the start, so if Cebuana then only Cebuana will pay out. Howerd you are paying over the odds to keep your phone number alive, as you are on Smart then there are cheaper places (used to be some even better value ones but they are long gone) http://www.plugandtalk.co.uk/home/smart_load.html. You are paying about 2 quid for 100 peso load you can buy load for £1.80 per 100 peso on the above site and the validity period is pretty good, if you have any left over at the end of the period you can passaload the balance to you girlfriend who can use it up.
Yes, my fiancée's friend did get an immediate acknowledgement- it took just seconds. Was not aware she had to wait for second notification. Yes, I noticed that too. Also before you select what outlet you want it gives a list of about SIX agents but only actually gives you a choice of two to select with the radio button. On the home page there is further confusion as you can select either to send money or top up a mobile. But selecting either option takes you to exactly the same page and you have to make the selection again! Rather confusing! Yes, I paid £2.09, I thought it seemed a little expensive, but I only need to top-up every 120 days, so not a great expense. I don't actually use any of the credit on the phone as send any SMS via my PC using Poivy - that way I have a history of texts as support for any visa application - both on my PC and the Povy website. So, once I have loaded 100 Pesos onto my Smart SIM could I just pass that 100 Pesos load back to my mahal immediately? Just worried that may not keep my SIM card active!
I don't send notification to Ana, I was referring to the notification emails that they send to the sender, if you have not had the second confirmation email here in the UK then the money will not yet be available to pick up on the Cebuana or MLhullier systems, happened to us three times now. Yeah I thought you were probably not using the load, maintaining balance is usually one peso but if your phone is roaming then you probably need the 100 peso maintaining balance, at some point though you will have overlap where you have the last 100 peso and the new 100 peso, so if you did a 60 peso pasaload she would have load valid for 30 days, you could then pasaload 20 peso then 10 peso, total cost 93 peso, before the old load runs out (the original expiry date does not affect the receiving phone the receiving number gets a new validity of 30 days for the larger amounts, less for the 20 and 10 peso transfers). Basically text <targetphonenumber> <space> <amount> to 808 from your smart phone for example 09214902870 60 text to 808 This all works from the Smart plug n Talk so I think it will work from a roaming phone on the SMART network, you should also register your phone on the SMART website then you can activate or deactivate roaming via the web and check your balance, so if you got deactivated you could load it again then reactivate roaming via the web site, be careful though as there will be charges for the text messages required to set up the service and this might put you below your maintaining balance for roaming. Smart site is to be found here :- https://my.smart.com.ph/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/main.aspx?service=2&service=2
I don't actually have to retain any credit balance on the Smart SIM. Even with zero balance, it will stay working for up to 120 days. But I will top-up every 90 days just to be sure. When my fiancee sent me a 30 pesos load, I never received it, so I think the minimum load is possibly 100 Pesos. I leave the phone switched on all the time as I think they may be important in keeping the SIM working too! Interesting to note what you say about period of validity of passloaded balances! That means I could send her my balance and then she could return it to me and keep my phone going at a cost of two Pesos every 4 weeks!
I lost one of my Plug n Talk devices by leaving it at a pals house by accident for over 3 months, I got it back again and the load had expired maybe 2 months previously, I reloaded it and plugged it into the computer and everything worked fine. The SIM is just the same as any Smart Buddy SIM in the Phils except for the fact that by virtue of being plugged into a VOIP device it is effectively not roaming and is still logically in the Philippines. That is in effect what I do, the only problem with that is that each pasaload transaction costs 1 peso and the pasaload denominations are something like 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, 100, 200 peso, above 60 peso it is valid for 30 days and the 200 peso deal is valid for 60 days. I have done this kind of ping pong and it does work but I've not tried to be systematic about it, so there might be another catch somewhere apart from the 1 peso fee and the validity periods of the different denominations. edit: I meant to say that I am using this ping pong method to keep my second original Philippine number alive in the original plug n talk but I tend to buy a fair bit of load anyway so more often then not I transfer the load onto Ana after a while from both devices.
I had a nasty experience with them, i sent some money and instead of taking 1 payment from card they reserved another amount so basically the took payments instead of one. after this the person could not get the money and i asked for a refund and this has not happened yet. i will have to contact the FSA if payment is not refunded
This can happen with any company. I once booked a holiday with sta travel and they took the money out twice (was a holiday to Phuket, Thailand) and it was also too much for my bank account to clear at the time. So in effect, over £1200 was on hold and my bank account was locked up for a week waiting for a refund. When a payment is on hold with your bank it goes into a holding account, this usually can sit unclaimed for up to a week - 5 working days. The company who tried to take the payment cannot issue a refund as they do not have the money. They can cancel the payment if they have the card details, authorisation number and time and date of the transaction. Your bank can get you these details. I doubt the FSA will do anything here as these situations do happen and are usually due to problems with visa or within the banks themselves, not the company using their services. As long as you get your money back within a week, the FSA would consider the matter closed. Personally, I have seen this numerous times both as a victim of this flaw and within my working life as the guy who gets the earache from people when this happens to them. When did you make this transaction? My experience with World Remit has been pretty good. Yes, I have had some problems but they have always resolved them within hours, but then my issues had been after the transfer of cash had taken place. If the transaction has not been completed then they will be limited with what they can do.
Re: baltimore weekend getaways Oh, dear.......... You are so out of here................. Take a wee break yourself from the rat race. Bye, bye..............
I started by using Moneygram to send money to the Philippines. Then I was steered to Zoom as a cheaper fee option. As someone rightly said this was made non-available to European users who had no American Bank Account or American issued Debit/Credit Card. I moved to using Wester Union for a while after that. I then changed to using OrbitRemit who I found to be cheapish to send and reliable. But then I found WorldRemit. I was actually chatting online with the recipient when I made my first transfer using WorldRemit. They text the recipient so quickly saying the money was available for pick up it happened before I had a chance to tell them. Since that first time I have used WorldRemit several times every month for more than a year now. I have always found them to be inexpensive, very quick, very helpful when I do have a question (such as "can I send to myself when I'm in the Philippines" - the reply was yes), very competitive exchange rate and very reliable. If you haven't already guessed I am a real fan of WorldRemit. As yet I have found no other company who can compare with them.
Just an update, WorldRemit transfers that go direct to a bank account are now completing in a matter of 2 or 3 hours, I sent money to my family today and it was there 2 hours later, not had that kind of service since XOOM pulled out of Europe many years ago. Don't know if this applies to all banks but it worked for Unionbank, I will test this month with Metrobank as well and report back.
Switched a month ago (separate thread on my WU account being hacked) So far, much happier with World Remit, espescially when a polite lady rang me to check that I had indeed made a remittance.
I used them last month and when it came to the Verified by Visa page I got a message saying I had to contact my issuing bank to verify the transaction instead, rather than using Verified by Visa. Yesterday, when I sent another remittance, the Verified by Visa page popped but promptly disappeared without me having to verify at all. Indicates some sort of problem to me with the website and maybe they called you, as you were a new customer, because of that website problem. Did you have to use Verified by Visa or the Mastercard equivalent (SecureCode)?
Howerd the 'Verified By' pages are not hosted or managed by WorldRemit, the javascript that allows them to run is hosted externally from Worldremit's site, sure it runs in your browser but it's got nothing to do with them, problems in this respect should be addressed to the banks. WorldRemit are quite hot on security, they pick up on transfers made from non UK IP addresses, I guess if I were Nigerian and I tried to make a transfer while I was in France they would pick up on that too. Last week I made a transfer to my family while I was in Poland, I did not even wait for them to call me I called them and explained and indeed they had frozen the transfer until they got the full picture, they were very pleased that I had called them first, I don't think that happens very often but they immediately released my transaction, nice people and so far (18 months for us) a good company! (small and very large (by Filipino standards) transfers on a regular basis)
I like how they paused the transaction whilst you were in Poland Pretty sure like all financial institutions they will at times be targeted by scammers to make off with some ill gotten gains, but nice to know they are doing as much as they can to stop it. Also been using them now for about 2 years and though I had some issues at first (my wife's ID included her middle name so I needed to add it as if it were her second first name) I've never had a problem with their service.
Verified by Visa is run by Visa, not the banks. But there is clearly a problem if the Verified by Visa page pops up, which can only be at the request of World Remit, and then promptly disappears! If World Remit did decide not to require Verified by Visa on any single transaction I would expect that the box should not appear at all. Verified by Visa has caused quite a few problems since it is often mistaken as an infected website, if the page pops up on the transacting website rather than going to Visa's own website. That is why Visa introduced additional safeguards in the form of a short recognisable phrase. Incidentally, I did a mystery shop job earlier this year at Santander, requiring me to open a new bank account. I was asked for a password I wished to use. When I asked what the password was for, the Santander employee told me it was for Verified by Visa! My suspicions were immediately aroused as the Verified by Visa is between me and Visa, not between me and the bank. And the only way to set up the password initially is by starting an on-line transaction. I contacted the mystery shopping company I was working for and they suggested I abort the account application. I got paid £20 extra for uncovering this serious problem. Smaller companies are probably hotter on security than the likes of WU. One advantage of using WU by phone (rather than internet) is that the customer agent will always advise if you are sending money to a known scammer. That won't happen over an internet transaction.
I just used World Remit again. This time, instead of the standard Verified by Visa screen, I got the Verified by Visa registration screen! But my card has been registered with Verified by Visa since 2009! I ring my bank (twice) They say they cannot help me and that I have to call Visa. I ask the bank for the Visa phone number but they tell me to Google it! I find the number but I am passed from department to department. Eventually they tell me that my Visa card is unknown to them and that Verified by Visa must be handled by the bank (rather than Visa) for my card number. But the bank had told me they do not handle Verified by Visa enquiries! Anyway, call the bank again who then tell me that the transaction had been blocked because of possible fraud! My bank unblocks the card and transaction then goes through OK - without having to enter any Verified by Visa details on World Remit whatsoever, even though the Verified by Visa page did pop up again momentarily. My bank did then tell me that Verified by Visa is now changing to an adaptive method, so that not all transactions will have to go through Verified by Visa even when the merchant requests it. The agent said that the Verified by Visa page would still pop up momentarily however, in such situations.
On my first call to Nationwide about the Verified by Visa problems, the call handler did not even verify who I was! On the second call, my identity was verified but the call handler failed to check the Verified by Visa system, saying that I would have to call Visa for that. I made an immediate complaint to Nationwide who called me back today. The result is that both call handlers are to be disciplined. The complaints handler said she was 'appalled' at the failure of staff. I did not seek compensation but Nationwide offered £20, which I accepted. It will be in my account within 7-10 working days.
Breached of the Data Protection Act are pretty serious in financial institutions.. I know blatant breaches can lead to an instant dismissal!
There was no breach of the Data Protection Act. Nationwide have an IVR system which asks for your customer or card number. I entered this on the phone keypad but the IVR does no identity checks - you simply get put through to an agent. Nationwide then ask what the query is before determining proof of identity. I asked my query but the agent simply said he could not deal with Verified by Visa enquiries and said I would have to contact Visa. I asked for Visa's number (it does not appear on the card) and he said 'Google it'. On the second call (to a lady) I went through the same process and she did, at least after asking what my enquiry was, she proceeded to go through ID checks. But she also said Nationwide do not deal with Verified by Visas enquiries and that I would have to contact Visa. She could provide no phone number. The fact is that Nationwide, as it turns out, has a Verified by Visa system which their agents can access and, according to the complaints handler, my query was a typical query that call handlers can and do answer. I should not have been referred to Visa. Other banks have different procedures whereby bank customers are referred to Visa for such enquiries. But this is not the case with Nationwide - they are all answered in-house (but I think this has not always been the case) I must say that Nationwide's complaints handling team are excellent. I have had to contact them at least three times in the past year because of failings by staff - each time the matter has been sorted quickly and with compensation offered without me having to request any compensation! The worst problem I had was when Nationwide sent me someone else's bank book. I contacted that person and they had received my bank book! But Nationwide tried to conceal that fact, so, in that instance, I squeezed every last penny from them in compensation as well as getting them to issue a new account number.
