Need help with HiFX problems
 

Here is the sorry story in all it's gory details so far:

I've been living in Canada for 5 years and before that I lived in Germany for 17 years. Before that I grew up in the UK and I'm a UK citizen but I have no UK bank account. Recently my dad died in the UK and left a smaller amount of money to me and my brother. My brother has been living in Canada for about a year and lived in the UK all his life before that and he has a UK bank account. The inheritance is currently in my brother's UK bank account. In Canada I have several bank accounts and we quickly noticed that a direct transfer from my brother's UK account to my CAD account was going to be relatively expensive. So I went on the lookout for a better way to transfer the money. Enter HiFX. A colleague of mine had used HiFX to transfer money from the UK to Canada in order to buy his house here. He told me that he had a good experience with HiFX and that they were fast and efficient. So I registered on the HiFX website, read all the blurb, and sent HiFX scans of two documents proving my address in Canada. HiFX promptly responded within 24 hours. Then I set up a HiFX transaction so that my brother could transfer my part of the inheritance from his UK bank account, into my UK HiFX account, so that the transaction would automatically convert and transfer the received money into my CAD account in Canada. When you set up a transaction at HiFX then it's almost like programming -- and yes, I'm a programmer :-) You have to state exactly how much money will be arriving, in which currency you want it converted when it arrives, and to which international bank account it will be automatically transferred. The only annoying thing with creating the transaction is that HiFX wants a lot of information and some while you are hunting down the info then the website wizard often times out and you have to start from the beginning again... which is annoying. Finally you creating the transaction and feel very proud of yourself. In theory, all that's necessary then is to transfer the money into the HiFX account using the reference code given for the transaction. But wait... on the final screen after confirmation then a bit of small-print says that the money *must* be transferred from a bank account in the same name as the HiFX account holder. Oh no... I don't have a UK bank account myself so it sounds like if my brother made the transaction then it would be rejected by HiFX. So I called up HiFX in order to ask them if my worst fears were true. If you live in Canada then calling the HiFX hotline is tricky due to the time difference. Although HiFX are in the business of international transfers, they operate decidedly conservative hotline hours which are standard UK weekday, office hours. This is inconvenient for me and not them. The good news is that when you call then they answer the phone pretty quickly. In my case then HiFX confirmed my worst fears. However, they were able to offer a workaround. The workaround is that I should get my brother to 'join' my HiFX account. He should register and by doing so then HiFX would accept the payment from the UK bank account in his name. The HiFX support person even asked for his name and e-mail and sent a web link to him in order to make it as easy as possible. What they didn't know is that my brother is extremely busy and is very slow at doing anything at the best of times. Anyway, my brother gets the link but wants to ask HiFX for more info about what's going on. However, due to the time difference between Canada and the UK and his busy schedule then he can't get hold of HiFX and he doesn't click on the link immediately. I can only guess when he really clicked on it but I guess it might have been as late as ~ 48 hours after arrival. Whatever, he says the link says 'expired' when he clicks on it. However, my next contact with HiFX is an e-mail on the 18th which says: "We note from our records that your above mentioned contracts matured on 16/10/12 and there is still an outstanding balance. Please arrange to transfer the total sum of £XXX to settle this at your earliest convenience." So I call the HiFX hotline at about 5 AM my time to speak to the author of the e-mail. However, the author of the e-mail has stepped out from the office so I get to speak to the assistant and tell her the whole sorry story so far. I ask the assistant if I can just cancel the transaction since that might be the easiest at this stage. The assistant says I would have to speak to a different department to do that but it's difficult and probably not necessary. She says that the author of the e-mail will call me back later. The author of the e-mail never calls me back. However the next day I receive a telephone call from somebody else we'll call H. I have to explain the whole story to H again and ask about cancelling the contract. H tells me directly that it's impossible to cancel the contract. H also says that I can add my brother again myself by logging into my HiFX account, navigating to 'my account', and clicking on 'add contact'. We end the call and I do just that. The 'add contact' menu asks me for the name and e-mail address of the contact to add to the account so I type in my brother's name and e-mail address. It rejects the e-mail address. Why? Because when original link from HiFX to my brother expired then he registered his own account at HiFX... not knowing that this would be of no use to solving my transaction. Luckily, I am a programmer and I know that if [email protected] is rejected then [email protected] will likely not get rejected while all e-mails to name+<anything>@gmail.com will automatically get delivered to [email protected] ... this is a special e-mail thing. So I register my brother as [email protected] and feel one step closer to fulfilling my contract. In the meantime he decides that he doesn't want to join my HiFX account because he feels it's all too much trouble, plus he's so busy. Unfortunately, my brother is not the smartest pencil in the box and he doesn't realize the problems that makes for me because of my HiFX transaction. Unfortunately I live on the west coast of Canada and he lives on the east coast which also means that it's difficult for me to explain everything to him. However, I have a backup plan. The backup plan is to get my mother to join my HiFX account and to get my brother to transfer the inheritance into her UK account so that she can transfer the money into my HiFX account in order to fulfil the transaction. So I log back into my HiFX account, click on the 'my account' section, and click on the 'add contact' link. Oh no... the 'add contact' link is nowhere to be seen. Can you only add one contact and then no more? I can't contact HiFX because it's the weekend. Even if contact HiFX on Monday and get them to add the link back in then I still have to explain everything to my aging mother and get her to do complicated stuff (for her) to 'join'. And all this is causing time to tick on this stupid transaction which could have been all so simple but which has turned into a nightmare. My wife is having sleepless nights about this. But the bigger question is... should I really be still trying to beat this dead horse? Should I really be trying to insist on cancelling the contract with HiFX? I guess 99% of HiFX customers have UK accounts and never run into this problem. It seems a bit unfair that no questions or info during the transaction creation wizard mentioned that the funds will have to come from a UK account in the same name as the HiFX account holder. This could have all been avoided if the HiFX transaction creation wizard asked me for the exact account details for the incoming transfer. That way the wizard could have validated that the account names didn't match and my nightmare would have been avoided. That fact that such a mechanism doesn't exist makes me wonder how many other people are in my position and whether HiFX is some kind of scam. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. On the web then HiFX seems to have a good reputation. So why do I find myself in this situation? And why is it so difficult to cancel a transaction? What should I do? Any advice greatly appreciated...

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Hi S1m0n,

Thanks for taking the time to post all the details of the issues you've been experiencing.

So that I can get one of the team to look into this for you ASAP, please could you drop me a personal message with your client number and any other details you think important and we'll look into this for you tomorrow (Monday).

In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Mark Bodega
Director - HiFX

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Thanks for the reply. You may have to private message me because when I tried to private message you then the forum said: "The administrator has restricted use of the private message system to members with more than 3 posts."

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

And this would be my 3rd post to the forum...

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Sending the last two posts allowed me to send the private message.

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

And the saga continues... :-( Assuming that HiFX will continue to not want to cancel the transaction, today I contacted my mum in order to preempt matters. However, my mum is currently on holiday but will be back on Wednesday evening. So that's the earliest that she has access to e-mail and web. She doesn't have a scanner so I guess she'll have to post her proof of address to HiFX on Thursday? Meaning the earliest she could join my account is Friday? All this means that the money isn't going to get transferred via HiFX any time next week :-(

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Update: It's coming up to 6 PM UK time Monday and no contact from HiFX :-(

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Hi s1m0n,

I understand you spoke with Wendy yesterday. I'm glad we've been able to come to a solution. My apologies for not getting back to you personally, however my 3 year old caught one of the many stomach bugs going around at the moment so I was playing at being a nurse!

If you need anything else please don't hesitate to let me know.

Best regards,

Mark
Director - HiFX

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

So here's what happened: I tried to get my mum to join my account by logging into my HiFX account and wanting to click on the 'add contact' link. However, after having already clicked on the 'add contact' link for my brother -- who actually never became a contact -- then the link disappeared! Thanks to Mark in this forum then Wendy eventually called near end of working day UK time on Tuesday. Wendy was nice and understanding and after talking about all the options, including the missing link, she graciously offered to cancel the existing transactions at no cost to myself. This was such a relief and now my wife is sleeping well again. Thank you, Wendy and Mark if you are reading this.

But what about the money that I want to transfer from the UK to Canada? So around the same time my brother transferred the money from his UK account to my mother's UK account. My mother was actually away from home until last Wednesday evening. However, she returned to find the money in her account. Even though I had the problems above, I'm still willing to give a second chance to HiFX so I asked her whether she'd prefer to create her own HiFX account or 'join' mine? She wanted to join my account and this time I could log in and find the 'add contact' link again. Wendy must have enabled it? So my mum got an e-mail from HiFX asking her to join. When she clicked on the link in the e-mail then her browser always gave her the message "server certificate invalid" :-( Not a good start. My mum uses Google Chrome 22.0.1229.94 and I suggested that she try using another browser to workaround this latest HiFX problem. Switching to Safari did the trick, so she logged in and HiFX offered her a web form to fill out. When it came to the home address part then yet another problem reared its ugly head :-( Although my address is in Canada, the country field on the web form for my mum's home address was fixed to Canada too! She couldn't change it to the UK! In desperation I suggested to my mum to call Wendy who kindly offered to help with anything in the future. Alas, my mum tried to call Wendy at 5:50 PM on Thursday but Wendy had already left the office and apparently doesn't come into the office on Fridays either :-( So my mum entered a strange looking address, and submitted the id info necessary which will hopefully get approved on Monday. Bad thing is that my mum had to leave again on Friday and won't have internet access for a while :-( If I log into HiFX right now on Saturday evening then the 'add contact' link is gone still and there is no info about my pending new contact. If I log in as my mum then the address looks correct; Country is UK. If I click on 'Upload Documents' then it says 'No further documents are required at this time.' and there's a big green tick. Presumably this means that the documents have been validated and accepted? At least that's what it says for my account. So this all looks like good news. Next step is to arrange a suitable date with my mum for her to transfer the money to HiFX just after I have created the transactions -- which I know from past experiences cannot be created at the weekend. Hopefully the next time I post here will be to deliver the good news that the transfer has been a success... stay tuned!

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

I have a query along the lines of S1m0n's.

I have made a transaction with HiFX but my bank will not let me send the money to them via bank transfer (I am in another country and they won't believe that I am me, even though I told them repeatedly before I left). I needed the money asap so my girlfriend has transferred the money with her HiFX account, which has worked perfectly. Who can I get in contact with to inform about what has happened?

Thanks

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

Sorry to hear that, djh. Sounds like you have created a HiFX transaction that cannot be completed because the money from your account never got transferred to HiFX. In this case you need to contact HiFX ASAP as AFAIK there is no way to cancel a transaction -- using the web interface -- once created unless you somehow convince a HiFX member of staff to cancel it on your behalf. So I would call them up during UK office hours and hope that they give you mercy.

In general I think it's fair to say that HiFX is a tricky service to use if (a) you try to use it while you are overseas, and/or (b) you don't have a UK bank account, and/or (c) you are not 100% expert and confident making transfers from your UK bank account.

Re: Need help with HiFX problems
 

For some unknown reason I am unable to enter your Website . I start the log in with my Username and Password then your introductory page appears .When I start to move it the screen freezes ! I am unable to do anything .Is it my IPad or my Paraguayan residence .I do have my URC and client number but unable to activate. Regards ,Ronald Burnett .