Ten Good Reasons Not to Use Western Union

cccc, Yahoo! Contributor Network
May 14, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

One of the leading service providers in the e-commerce realm is Western Union because it sends and receives money through electronic funds transfer. E-commerce actually consists of the trade or distribution of goods or services or other products through the use of electronic systems like the Internet and other networks that deal with computers.

Western Union has been considered the leader in worldwide money transfer service for more than 150 years now. In fact, they have 101,000 Western Union branches in more than 185 countries all over the world. But the once infallible Western Union is now faced with a lot of complaints from people who are vowing that they will never use the wire transfer company anymore.

Ten good Reasons Why People Are No Longer Using Western Union

Here are ten reasons why there are people now who will never use Western Union anymore and are advising others to do the same:

Many of those who are into promote scams use Western Union. It has been said that the wire transfer company is used as a go-between for quite a lot of fraudulent transactions. However, the company states that because they are not directly involved in the said transaction, they do not get involved to protect the security of their clients. There are so many con artists nowadays who urge consumers to send money through wire transfer service providers such as Western Union, with most of the transactions directed to Canada. They are mostly on advance payment for loans, fake winnings at a lottery or offering of cashier's checks, which are fake, to consumers. In 2002, more than $113 million was swindled from residents of the US through wire transfer fraud to Canada alone.
There are also reports that if you use a Western Union wire transfer to pay for a purchase that you did online, there is a possibility that your money will get stolen and you will never see your item or your money ever again. There is no way to recover your money, as Western Union will not provide you with any recourse regarding the matter and they will do nothing to help you address the situation.
Because they said they are tightening their security measures, Western Union has now become a racist company, which will not process wire transfers to people who have Arab-sounding or Muslim names. There are even certain other countries that they will not process wire transfers to, which are mostly Asian.
Because of their famous disclaimer that says they are not responsible for the non-receipt or quality of any goods or services that were transacted through them, they will not do anything to help you should this happen.
Western Union does not require the person, who should receive the money wired, to present a control number for any money transfer when they come to collect the money. This enables people who might have known about the transaction to collect the money, even if they are not the intended recipient.
You must know that they are not really overly concerned about the security of your money because for them security is everyone's responsibility. They believe that you should be the only one, who should make sure that the transaction that you are getting into is secure. You should know the person whom you are sending the money to and that if you happen to buy services or goods and are paying through their network; it is your sole responsibility to verify if the vendor is one with a sound reputation and is running a legitimate business.
They now have set up security requirements that don't necessarily align with your information and makes transactions even more complicated. They ask you questions that are out of this world, especially if they don't want to conduct the transfer that you want made. If they don't want you to avail of their services anymore, they will simply flag you without telling you the reason.
They have rude customer service people who will put you on hold for what seems like hours on end and then will ask you inane questions, only to tell you after several hours that they could not transact your wire transfer. There are even times when their toll free customer service number is not manned and will go on ringing for hours without anybody answering it.
The website of Western Union has been noted by some users as having quite a lot of errors. Many have noticed that aside from mixing up currencies, the page also makes math errors, which should not be the case for a page that deals with money transfers.
The wire transfer company is also known to disregard complaints. There are even times when the complaint form in the Contact Us portion in their site will not even display.