Does anyone deal with Western Union ?

hubb

A US company gives me only option for payment which is Western Union which I am finding a headache filling in their complex forms.

I am finding it very complicated to know what to do to set up payment to my UK bank. When I put the name of my bank in nothing happens with pre-populate. I have no idea what I am supposed to enter in “remit attention” and “remit email address”. There is no description explaining what they mean. Also, as my bank is unable to accept US dollar currency, wouldn’t this would be the same with Western Union also ?


Do uk banks deal with Western Union, and if so what kind of rate do they charge ?

Thanks.

garth549

Be very, very careful that the company you're dealing with is legit if they're insisting on Western Union... This is very commonly used by scammers & fraudsters as it's completely anonymous and the money can effectively be collected anywhere in the world, by anyone.

I'd say it's very suspicious that a so-called US company wouldn't be able to take payment via a bank transfer or card.

Please be very careful

grumbler

garth549 wrote: »

...I'd say it's very suspicious that a so-called US company wouldn't be able to take payment via a bank transfer or card.

They are making a payment, not taking it.

hubb

Yes the company is a music distributor fully legit.

grumbler

http://www.westernunion.co.uk/gb/customer-support/faq-send-money-to-bank-account.page#Q2

However, I don't see anything about “remit attention” and “remit email address”...

Re the conversion, it says:

Payout currency will only be available in the local currency of the country to which the transfer is sent. Senders should ensure that their Receiver’s bank account is a local currency account to avoid potential service delays or additional charges by the Receiver’s bank.

I guess this means that WU will do the conversion themselves.

Voyager2002

Surely they can send the money by Paypal, which has far more reasonable fees.

Or have a look at Custom House, https://www.xe.com, which is part of Western Union but in my experience is an excellent business.

lovinituk

Can't you just pick the payment up from a Western Union Office? When we've paid Chinese suppliers by WU in the past, we made the payment via the WU website and then gave the supplier the MTCN number which they used to collect the funds from a WU office.

grumbler

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Surely they can send the money by Paypal, which has far more reasonable fees.

It's a company !!!!!!. Not all companies have a Paypal account or would like to open it for making one transfer.

Also, PP fees aren't reasonable, let alone 'far more'.
WU is in the top lines on the comparison websites for UK to USA transfers with 1.465 today's rate for big amounts: https://www.fxcompared.com/money-transfer/UK-USA?amount=10000&bType=1&ref=filter

PP charge 1.5%+3%: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conversion-fees

For some reason WU doesn't show for USA to UK transfers - probably because of some stupid USA regulations.

Dr._Shoe

Have you actually spoken to your bank about it or are you expecting us to all have encyclopaedic knowledge of international banking?

grumbler

Speak to bank about what?
“remit attention” and “remit email address”?
You must be joking.
Even IBAN baffles some of them.

Also, what the OP expected was experience of dealing with WU, not "encyclopaedic knowledge of international banking", and from some not from "all".

maninthestreet

“remit attention” and “remit email address” would be your name and your email address ??

This link may be useful, but it's for the sender of the money, not the recipient.

https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/direct-to-bank-details.html