Free Transfer lies

I have transferred money from my Revolut account to a Canadian bank account
and have been charged over 100$ while still well under the 6k limit,
No customer service help to be found,
Revolut is falling apart, if anyone could explain why this would be great

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Charged by Revolut or charged by the Canadian bank? There is a huge difference…

People tend to quickly blame :r: for things not within :r: s control.

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bank transfers have intermediaries. the money makes several hopes from origin to destination. Revolut only warranties they don’t change anything for SWIFT transfers. They make no claim about what intermediaries or the beneficiary’s bank charges.

If the fees are charged by an intermediary chosen by Revolut (by which I means Lloyds UK), then it’s effectively a charge by Revolut. Once you rule that out (which I think it unlikely if Revolut have negotiated fee-free SWIFT payments with Lloyds), then you should go after the receiving bank and ask them to trace the missing CAD 100. I assume you were transferring from a CAD balance to a CAD bank account?

SWIFT “SHA” is like sending an international package. You know how much will it cost you to send it, but not how much will it cost you to receive it sadly.
With “OUR” is like paying duties upfront… but you are paying an inflated estimation of what those duties might be

No one gives free “OUR” transfers, only free “SHA”… where you know the first hop is free.

Revolut doesn’t provide “OUR” SWIFT transfers, only “SHA” unfortunately and that means it’s quite risky to do payments to third parties via SWIFT as you can’t know for sure how much will they receive before actually doing it.

It would me amazing if they could calculate the fees upfront, like transferwise does, so we know how much to send to confidently pay bills using Revolut. @anon33247966?

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SHA doesn’t mean that the first hop is free. The sending bank can charge a fee with SHA, and so can the receiving bank.

I didn’t say SHA means the first hop is free, I said free SHA means the first hop is free

That’s not the case only with Revolut. That’s how all the SWIFT transfers work:

@aservice’s transfer was a SWIFT transfer so all the intermediary banks applied a fee apart from Revolut!

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Maybe that’s because @RevolutStaff claims free international transfers on their front page instead of claiming free handover to the SWIFT system which will then charge tons of fees?

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Yes, and this is a huge difference compared to competitors. For example, if you send money with Western Union, you know you pay a painful fee, but they’ll tell you an exact amount (to the penny) how much money will be delivered on the other end.

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Great, so why have a completely misleading and wrong front-page picture? Why tell people “free” when it absolutely isn’t free? Why compare with Western Union knowing that you have intermediaries that charge fees (in another thread, a user reported a loss of 10%!) while they don’t?

Here is a screenshot of what really makes me want to leave Revolut:

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Technically it is free, you as a customer have to be aware that other banks will rob you if you don’t look out. That is the same as it always has been.

And the image, well if you play your cards right and chose the correct options it actually is free. I deposit SEK from a swedish bank via swift into :r: SEK account completely free for example.

No, it’s not. Not technically or anything. @RevolutStaff does not execute the actual transfer, they hand over the money to someone else who will then charge (extreme) fees for actually transferring the money. Thus, already calling what they do a transfer is a lie. The transfer isn’t free, only the handover is. Being completely silent about this and even comparing to other services that execute the full transfer is absolutely inacceptable.

The wording implies with no doubts the example is representative for the 25 currencies Revolut is talking about.

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you are absolutely correct. that comparison is misleading at best as all of them include the fees from the intermediaries and Revolut’s 0 doesn’t.

@anon33247966?

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Revolut has been and are lowering fees for their customers all the time, they can not be blamed for the fact that old school banksters keep their robberies up as if nothing happened.

Revolut to my knowledge does not charge any fee and there for they are correct in their statments.

Blame the ones who are the cause of the problem instead, seem a lot more productive?

I think your view is a bit mono-dimensional here. It’s not like all banks are evil and fintechs only want to make the world a better place. Yes, I like Revolut; in particular, I like how fast they innovate and move forward (otherwise I’d not bother to complain here actually). But they are a company and of course they want to make profit, just like old-school banks. And just like them, they need to be fair while doing so. And sorry, the current presentation of their money transfer feature is the exact opposite of fair and transparent; it implies zero fees for international transfers in - at least - the mentioned 25 currencies and uses a flawed comparison to make the competition look worse than Revolut, where in fact they might be significantly cheaper for a specific transfer. Thus, it tricks the user into sending money at a potentially much higher fee. This is the opposite behavior of what a banking revolution needs.

By the way, we haven’t even talked about all aspects here. As I’ve pointed out on a different thread, the app displays a text telling you what the receiver gets in the target currency when sending an international transfer. It’s plain and simple: If you display an amount of what the receiver will get, the receiver has to get exactly that amount. Zero room for discussion. If you can’t make sure the receiver gets this amount of money, you can’t display it.

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Indeed Revolut does not charge a fee, for less than 5K per month! For example, SEPA top ups/transfers have no fees applied by Revolut, the logic is the same with SWIFT transfers top ups, no fee by Revolut. However, because it’s a SWIFT and because the banks are not transparent we cannot calculate the exact fee would be applied.

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Why are we talking about a top-up? The post is about a transfer from Revolut to a Canadian bank account…

Still the same logic, except above 5K per month.

You should, by the way, also add a footnote for that on your front page calculation; and even more, it’s also not true on the weekend. But that’s a different discussion.

The main point is, your logic is still flawed. You talk about a transfer, but instead you hand the money to a bank and let them do the transfer while collecting high fees. And then you present the whole transfer as free on your web page. With your logic, every flight portal could advertise flights as free: “Travel everywhere around the world for free! For example, if you book a flight from Munich to Berlin on opodo.com, you pay 500 dollars - not with us; with us, it’s free!”. Later, when the customer complains about 1000$ being charged from his account, you tell them: “No, we haven’t charged you. It was the airline! Obviously the airline will charge you, everyone knows that.”. That’s just absurd, sorry.

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