Complaint Review: remitly.com sharemoney.com and WesternUnion.com - Seattle WA

I actually sent $200 to the Phillipeans using Western Union and they charged me a $45 fee!  That highway robbery sent me on a mission to find an alternate money-sending service.

Send money.com looked promising, but they are goddamn morons.  I want to send money from my US account to myself while travelling in Colombia, but their system detects that I am in Colombia, not the United States and you can not initiate this type of transaction from Colombia, only from the US!  I can't recommend doing business with any company so f**king ignorant of how the Internet works.

Then comes the biggest disappointment of all: remitly.com.  I wasted nearly a week trying to use their service, but their systems immediately froze my account each time we tried a different source of funds, including a debit card that they wanted to charge a credit-card fee when they advertise na $3.99 fee for debit cards.  When I called customer service they implied that I was shady and that they declined to send my own money because... they wouldn't tell me why! They are very poor at customer service and I felt "slimed" just having to interect with them.  I definitely would not recommend remitly unless you are ready to be treated like a suspected criminal.

Finally, I found sendvalu.com, which promises a low rate, but was not as low as promised.  However, with sendvalu, at least they were able to deliver my money to me with less than an hour of filling out forms and providing documentation and they didn't treat me like they didn't want my business.  They did charge me $25 for sending $1,500 to Colombia, which was significantly the the rippoff fees that WU charged for a mere $200.  And while remitly claimed to be able to send money for a mere $3.99, they FAILED miserably.  (As my local butcher is fond of saying when his prices are not as low as the store down the street which is always sold out, "our chicken is only $1.99/lb also when we don't have any".)

I only took me time to write this complaint because I promised remitly.com that I was going to do so.

Part of my email dialog with remitly when they said that they would review why my account was suspended:

"I am not sure that I care to do business with Remitly as it has been like pulling teeth trying to successfully use your service.  I had mentioned your service to several friends. Now I fear that I am going to have to follow up my initial excitement to recommend Remitly with a follow-up "caveat emptor"...   "Remitly needs customers.  Your potential customers have options.  That's the great thing about free market economics.   "I do hope that Remitly survives.  It's not looking promising from where I stand."

And then when they wrote back and said, "We carefully reviewed our decision to suspend your Remitly account and determined that your account will remain suspended. We will not be able to reinstate your account or provide any additional insight into this matter." (they essentially did not want my business):

My final words to them: 

"You guys are a disgrace to your industry.  I wasted a week trying to work with you. It took less than an hour to accomplish the task with SendValu.com.  I will be making my displeasure and horrific experience made known in public forums.  May your business rot in the dark recesses of the unexplored corners of the stagnant Internet."