8/11/2018 Account locked. Customer support? Deplorable. More than 60h, and counting.

- Feedback - Revolut Community

Account locked. Customer support? Deplorable.

More than 60h, and counting.
Feedback

foobar 2018-07-28 23:38:55 UTC #1

My wife has been using Revolut for quite a while. Recently she tried to add one of her
cards, and upon hitting “Add card”, Revolut just blocked the account. Just like that.
“Security measures” is what Revolut and some of you will say (totally overboard is what
I’d say), but that’s beyond the point.

She got in contact with Support to unblock the account. She has quite a bit of funds in
Revolut (a mistake, but still). She was told waiting time is 24h, which is ridiculous to
begin with - this isn’t some silly software support we’re talking about, but a restriction
imposed on someone to access their own funds, and it’s an urgent enough matter for
which actual banks have 24/7 phone numbers to help sort out … but I forgot: “Revolut is
better than your bank,” right?

Anyway, it’s been more than 60h and counting, and nobody has bothered to reply.

My own experience with Revolut customer support (I’m a Premium member too) has
also been deplorable for the past year, and even more so in the recent months with
double spends and funds held hostage for many days, e.g. see here … shall I also bring
up all the top-up and payment issues affecting so many of us recently?

Reading these forums, I see @AndreasK spends his time mostly apologising, an
observation made by others too.

Revolut is simply not reliable. I get the distinct impression that when it works, then
you’re lucky, and for the rest of time: pray you don’t need customer support.

Bottom line is my wife’s funds are blocked, nobody is replying, there is no phone number
or email for Customer Support … oh, but Revolut keeps developing these absolutely
critical features, like vaults or the even more critical, accelerated vaults!

Guess who will stop using Revolut after getting their funds back?

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To Revolut: stop spending time and money on developing silly features that nobody
prioritizes above customer support, and start bloody investing in actual customer
support! As far as I’m concerned, you failed as a bank/bank replacement. I can’t trust
you being reliable for any of the most important operations: add card, top-up, payment …
all 3 had major issues, more than once (resulting funds locked or account locked for
long periods of time).

Deplorable.

pepe2124 2018-07-29 03:09:59 UTC #2

Try to contact them on Twitter. That has been my alternative to regular support when it’s
urgent.

badskittler 2018-07-29 08:37:05 UTC #3

Had similar, noti cation said 24 hours wait, used FB Messenger, immediate response,
uploaded sel e with id, back in business in 1½ hours.

As a comparison - 18 months ago holiday in Mallorca, Nationwide card rejected,

telephone helpline not answered (continuously busy), no noti cations from bank, 3 days
later card started working again, complained and had apology 4 weeks later, apparently
computer failure that knocked out most overseas transactions.

wins hands down.

Powie 2018-07-29 08:44:09 UTC #4

My experience is totally the opposite, following recent Mastercard outage:

Halifax failed payment reverted to my bank in 30 mins, no need to phone support.

failed payment. 6 days to revert, many attemps to contact customer services with
zero response.

isnt even in the same league.

alessandro 2018-07-29 14:22:50 UTC #5

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badskittler:

Had similar, noti cation said 24 hours wait, used FB Messenger, immediate
response, uploaded sel e with id, back in business in 1½ hours.

While that did solve your issue it still shows how dysfunctional Revolut’s support is. It
cant be that some third party channel is supposed to be more effective than their very
own o cial support channel. Revolut cant expect people to have all sorts of pro les
with other services just to get problems xed they started.

foobar 2018-07-29 17:30:03 UTC #6

badskittler:

3 days later card started working again

… and that’s still far better than what has been happening on multiple occasions to me +
friends with Revolut: the card is being rejected (Revolut always blaming their payment
processor or acquirer) then Revolut’s customer service is non-responsive for the rst
~24h or more, then they tell you the funds are locked and will be reverted in 7-10 days
and that you need to wait. Retrying the transaction gave more money to Revolut to keep
hostage for another 7-10 days. Sometimes you’re lucky and get it back after, say, 5 days.

See more here: https://community.revolut.com/t/charged-twice-for-a-unsuccessful-

airplane-ticket-payment/47043/39

June and July were full of such issues for us (in France). The recent apology & promises
blog post from the Revolut CEO didn’t leave me any more hopeful. Customer Support
has been getting worse, not better.

revodrago 2018-07-29 18:52:58 UTC #7

i want to ask how many cards did your wife added until she hit the add card again. Ive
added 3 of my cards till now, and the automated security system did not took any
action.

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foobar 2018-07-29 20:54:58 UTC #8

This was only her 3rd or 4th (can’t recall exactly, and now we can’t check). The other
ones have been used to top-up regularly, and the account has seen plenty of activity and
volume. This overzealous approach to security is damaging. 3DS was invented for that
reason, to do the initial authentication and authorization with the credit card issuer, then
pass the result to the merchant, in this case Revolut. Revolut just said “no, that’s not
good enough, let’s block this, and make them wait 3 days (and counting)”.

OFF-TOPIC: This overzealous approach to security is even more frustrating for the ones
with some background in security engineering listening to Revolut say “the system
detected [bleh], we can’t do anything about it, you need to [bla]” … well, that system was
con gured by a human being, so you can certainly do something about it, and that
human being needs their own security settings tweaked to understand “security vs
functionality”.

I had my own account at Revolut blocked several times in a similar way (plus issues
with double spends, money taken hostage for 7-10 days because of failures on their end
etc). I then stopped using Revolut for anything other than IBAN transfers to another
country, until that too got my account blocked twice: “suspicious activity” - because I
made 3 transfers with some regularity (to a company with publicly veri able
information! and Revolut demanded details about the nature of those transfers …).

Since then I stopped using Revolut completely, despite being a Premium member
(customer service is just as bad). I realized I can’t predict what happens if I click “add”
or “top-up” or “send/pay” - will it work, or will it block my account and take my funds
hostage? Went back to using TransferWise: slightly higher fees, but it actually works
(and has higher limits, plus free business accounts). Revolut is just not suitable to be a
nancial institution, at least not the one they advertise. May try Monzo now that they
have an actual banking license.

I decided to nally make a thread about it because I really had it with Revolut.

freddychin 2018-07-30 11:15:01 UTC #9

This is the exact situation I am in right now, and although I am new to the community
and the platform itself (not digital banks, just ), I must say that I completely agree

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with you foobar - I actually did quite a lot of research on the company before I signed up.
I knew that there were problems with customer service, but everyone has that mentality
where they think ‘it won’t happen to me’ - well 2 days later after signing up, I was locked
out, and now I have been locked out for 2 days. Half my experience with has been
face-to-face with that security lock screen. I wrote an in-depth review of my thoughts in
on Reddit - it may sound silly because I’m so new, but honestly, you don’t need that
long to gather a rst impression, one that is seemingly backed up with countless
reviews and from a friend’s personal experience.

I hope that this is all due to the relative newness of the platform, hopefully with time,
they will improve the existing customer experience rather than constantly marketing
new features to entice new customers. I believe in , and I hope they succeed because
I admire the CEO and his vision and reasoning for creating such an app. In terms of
execution though… it’s time to start investing more on the customer experience and
loyalty rather than unsustainable growth.

foobar 2018-07-30 11:31:49 UTC #10

Sorry to hear you’re in the same boat. The vision isn’t new - many similar companies
exist (N26, DiPocket, TransferWise, Monzo, Starling, Monese etc) but Revolut had more
penetration in the UK, and I chose it because normally a larger customer base also
means larger and more reliable operations … I was wrong. There are so many things
going wrong with Revolut on a fairly regular basis. I now call Revolut “an interface to
multiple points of failure”. Sadly, the CEO’s vision has the wrong priorities. I’m looking
forward to N26 coming to the UK.

AndreasK 2018-07-30 11:34:46 UTC #11

Hi there. We are sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We have responded and
resolved your query. If you need anything else, please let us know.

AndreasK 2018-07-30 11:36:03 UTC #12

@foobar unfortunately your case is still under review. Sometimes this process can take
longer, which can happen for a number of reasons:

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8/11/2018 Account locked. Customer support? Deplorable. More than 60h, and counting. - Feedback - Revolut Community

A wave of suspicious activity causes many different accounts to be locked, which

increases the workload on our agents

Some cases require deeper investigation to ensure that those users aren’t
committing fraud, making the review last longer

We work with a wide variety of partners, so we sometimes need to get their

perspective on a case and this can also cause delays (although we’re not pointing any
ngers!)

AndreasK 2018-08-08 09:27:37 UTC #14

AndreasK 2018-08-08 09:27:39 UTC #15

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