justyzz

i ordererd canadian dollars with hifx. they called me that afternoon and went through some basic security questions. in the evening (after their working hours) i recived this mail:

[COLOR="blue"]Dear xxxxxxxxxx

We apologise that we have not been able to fulfil your order. We have an automated process where sometimes an order may be rejected due to a combination of features or trends and this can occur after the order has been confirmed. The result does not necessarily reflect on you individually but has been set based on former activity matching these features or trends.

If you would like further information please refer to our terms and conditions section 4.

Please be advised that the initial pre authorisation of these funds will not be collected by us if your order is not dispatched. It can take 3 - 10 working days for the pre authorisation to lapse and we would recommend that you contact your card issuer to speed this process up. For more information about this process please refer to your card issuer.

Travel Money Services
Telephone: 0208814 8825

i was not too bothered. i assumed it was probably part of the security measures.

i phoned them this morning. i was told they would not discuss the order with me and its their discretion to refuse. worse is i will get my money in 3-10 working days. i am losing it....
has anybody experienced this.

paolosmythe

well from having read their Ts&Cs, my committment to go ahead and use them for several £10s of thousands quickly disappeared.

from checking my interpretation of their section 4, it seems that due to your having a less than perfect financial history, they invoked their right to walk away without giving prior notice.

and that is that. just use someone else. there are tons out there.

good luck to you (to all of us!)

Windsor2

Justyzz

My apologies for the issues you experienced. From the response you received, it's clear that you were using our travel money facility rather than the international money transfer service.

I will look into what happened for you and get back to you early next week with a PM. In the meantime I do know that due to the nature of the service (i.e it being debit and credit card based) card issuers understandably get jittery and are extremely cautious when approving foreign cash transactions. As a result transactions can be refused for reasons that have nothing to do with the card holder, your credit worthiness, the balance in your bank account etc....

When these kinds of issues occur, you the user then quite rightly demand an explanation from us, the service provider, but we are then restricted by anti money laundering rules and regulations as to what we can then say to you.

Crazy I know.

Please accept my apologies and rest assured I'll look into this for you and come back to you early next week.

Best Regards

Mark Bodega
Director - HiFX

phat-dave

I have to say I am very impressed with the level of professionalism in HiFX's responses - I'll certainly be using them in October!

Cassie 10000

The same here to be honest, I wasn't expecting to read a comment in response on here from them.

Butch Cassidy

The terms

'Fire-Fighting', 'Saving Face', 'Customer Service' and 'OH SH*T' come to mind.

purple80

We have dealt with Hifx a couple of times during the last year. Last week we needed to transfer the remainder of the UK house sale proceeds.

OH contacted Hifx to arrange this only to be told that they now used Currency Online, he had been sent an email but he did not read all of it..........Shame really as that explained what he needed to do, open account with Currency Online, etc.

Major panic as we needed the money in Canada to finalise our mortgage conditions.

Both Hifx and Currency Online (who are in New Zealand) did all they could to sort new account out and transfer the funds, the money arrived in Canada within 5 working days.

Apparently OH got to play trader as you watch the rate go up and down and pick when to buy!

They get my

mandymoochops

Oh I dunno Butch, I think its any companies duty to address concerns / complaints. Not necessarily saving face, just working towards a resolution.

Even if nothing can be done at least someone took the time and effort to acknowledge there was an issue. from me too.

Southcote

Agreed that it was good to see a response, but given the vast amount of other companies that provide this service why risk using them again. There are various comments from other BE members with mainly positive comments about different currency transfer companies.

For my part I did look at using HIFX but found their set up process far too cumberson compared to the likes of Moneycorp and FirstDirect

phat-dave

I hear what you guys are saying about there could be some saving face and they have strict policies etc but my understanding was that the OP actually selected the wrong service ie: travel money not international transfer.

A complete side note - but can Hifx help establish a Canadian account to deposit the funds into, or do I need to have arrived in Canada and go through the normal banking processes? The AUD vs CAD is fairly strong at the moment so I'd like to purchase but I don't want the money sitting in Hifx's kitty for four months, I'd prefer it were in an account earning some interest, if possible.

Jingsamichty

Unless you're depositing millions, any interest you earn in a few months is going to be negligible.

I just used HiFX/Currency Online again for a regular CAD-GBP transfer... HiFX gave CO my details and it was all fairly hassle-free again.

Butch Cassidy

Agree totally with the underlined, just 'odd' that the OP was getting no satisfaction UNTIL he posted here?

mandymoochops

The response from HIFX is not unusual - I have seen the company representative reply before.

Sometimes you can talk to the monkey at the call centre and get no-where as they are very immovable. (you know yourself what places like that are like) So it stands to reason that if you have a major gripe you will post it on here, and that might be the only time the organ grinder will see it.

And as this is a very widely used forum you have to nip things in the bud - so here is a good way to get a response

mandymoochops

unless you think it was a phoney complaint engineered to solicit a response to big up HIFX for them to get more trade that way.


God I have to stop being so suspicious

Iain Mc

Whoa, the depths of cynicism on here today!

Where's the faith in human nature?