Big increase in complaints about Revolut

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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There have been a few articles recently about the difficulty in resolving complaints with Revolut.

If you google :
revolut saga spotlights digital bank concerns

you will come to an FT article on the topic.

The person received £150,000 into their Revolut account and it went missing for some months and he could not speak to anyone about it.

But that is not the way to use a Revolut account.

People should transfer in only what they intend to spend in the short term and not large amounts.

I transfer in €200 when I need to.

If my account is closed or the money disappears, it won't hurt me too much.

Brendan
 
With the customer growth they are experiencing it must be difficult to keep up.

Much of these AML controls must be automated.

People should remember that Revolut is not a bank. Unfortunately the FT calls it a bank 11 times in the article!
 
People were blase about Ulster bank closing because they could move to online banking apps like Revolut however you have drawn attention to a very important point what do you do with large deposits? We have already had the scandal of Wirecard losing track of $2billion, the trail went cold in the phillipines apparently, not guys you can trust with large sums of money.
 
joe sod said:
We have already had the scandal of Wirecard losing track of $2billion, the trail went cold in the phillipines apparently, not guys you can trust with large sums of money.
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First of all it had nothing to do with bank deposits and second they did not loose track of it, they knew for that get go that it never existed!
 
Jim2007 said:
First of all it had nothing to do with bank deposits and second they did not loose track of it, they knew for that get go that it never existed!
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Plus
Jim2007 said:
First of all it had nothing to do with bank deposits and second they did not loose track of it, they knew for that get go that it never existed!
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And third Wirecard wasn't a bank or anything resembling a bank.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
There have been a few articles recently about the difficulty in resolving complaints with Revolut.

If you google :
revolut saga spotlights digital bank concerns

you will come to an FT article on the topic.

The person received £150,000 into their Revolut account and it went missing for some months and he could not speak to anyone about it.

But that is not the way to use a Revolut account.

People should transfer in only what they intend to spend in the short term and not large amounts.

I transfer in €200 when I need to.

If my account is closed or the money disappears, it won't hurt me too much.

Brendan
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Brendan,

I read the article, the issue here is not an issue bespoke to digital banks it is a case of frozen funds and bad customer service. This person used Revolut I suspect because of the simplicity and better FX rates. From personal experience, I had a similar issue with Revolut, my account was frozen for suspected money-laundering due to transferring a large sum from a foreign currency into Euros. Whilst it was frustrating, it showed good controls to detect it. I used the chat function and had to send supporting information and verification that the funds were mine, it took a few days but it was a relatively smooth experience.

I agree that there is a greater risk associated with keeping a large sum of money in Revolut vs AIB (or equivalent), due to Revolut not being regulated the same. However, that is credit and default risk. I don't agree with the rhetoric that digital banks controls are lesser than brick and mortar banks. Last time I checked there are plenty of complaints annually about brick and mortar banks.
 
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NoRegretsCoyote said:
I did a six-figure international transfer last year and an AML hitch was sorted within a few hours.

Revolut just don't seem to provide the same level of customer service in this regard.
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I should clarify the few days was a delay on my part to get the relevant documentation. I have no comparison but I was happy with the customer service received. I have had horrendous customer service with BoI, so much that I transferred my main account to KBC. The point is that bad customer service exists across the banking sector.
 
Agreed that bad customer service exists.

But there is nothing more frustrating than trying to solve a problem and not being able to speak to someone about it.

Some people might be comfortable chatting away to chat bots or waiting for a real person to respond who is simultaneously answering questions from a few people. But some of us are not.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
who is simultaneously answering questions from a few people.
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That seems to be the main problem with Revolut's chat agents. Instead of talking to 15 customers simultaneously they should just deal with one customer at a time. I don't think it would make them significantly less efficient and save a lot of customer frustration.
 
tomdublin said:
That seems to be the main problem with Revolut's chat agents. Instead of talking to 15 customers simultaneously they should just deal with one customer at a time. I don't think it would make them significantly less efficient and save a lot of customer frustration.
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For most issues that would drastically reduce throughput. There would be a whole lot of idle time waiting on chat responses.
In systems that work well, you usually deal with one agent handling many concurrent chats, and as things get more complex, you get transferred to people for that area who are handling less.
 
Yes but under their current system the waiting time is simply "transferred" to the customer with huge time gaps after every reply. I read somewhere that Israel has passed a law setting maximum waiting times for customers calling call centres (I don't know if it also applies to web chat). Something like that would be useful here as well.
 
tomdublin said:
Yes but under their current system the waiting time is simply "transferred" to the customer with huge time gaps after every reply. I read somewhere that Israel has passed a law setting maximum waiting times for customers calling call centres (I don't know if it also applies to web chat). Something like that would be useful here as well.
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No company would have an agent handling one chat at a time. It's totally unproductive. The "waiting time" transferred to you allows you to do other things rather then hanging on the end of a phone.
 
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