It seems like that changed somewhere around the turn of the century, whereby businesses started to decide that it was better to cut down on customer service, and in some cases, go so far as to ban customers. The first cases of this I recall reading about had to do with Best Buy, and specifically their policy of banning people from their stores who made a lot of returns.
I'm not really sure how it ultimately maths out - i.e., whether it's long-term optimal to drop troublesome customers or merely short-term optimal, and this was primarily taken from the perspective of retail.
As such, I'm sure the math changes a little for subscription services. However, I also recall my prior employer's support activity followed a power law distribution across its clients, so it wouldn't surprise me if a policy to drop particularly noisy clients is a net savings there as well.
Profit on most goods is low - single digit % typically - and a single return can eliminate the profit margins on a dozen sales. Sometimes cost can be reclaimed from goods providers - i.e. genuinely defective or manufacturer refurbishment programs - and sometimes they can resell the item as new. But if the item has been used, broken by the customer, etc. the loss is significant. It turns out that some people are more honest than others, and some people are directly trying to scam companies.
When one 'dodgy' customer can eliminate the value of 10 'real' sales with every return the maths say to ban people quickly.
A little anecdote - I have a distant relative who, circa 2005, would buy a vacuum cleaner use it, and then return it. He rotated stores (hardware stores, supermarkets, electronic stores) until he gradually got banned from them all. Once that happened he moved house. Not only had he almost certainly spent more in time and fuel than a reasonable vacuum would have cost him (which I will note he could afford); but the cost and waste he has incurred on both individual companies and society at large through that and similar schemes is staggering. I don't know if he's still at it - or alive - but the people he was surrounding himself with all saw such behaviour as reasonable.
There are definitely many customers you should drop, but business are not even that interested in retaining profitable customers. The problem is with the "over time".
Management are rewarded with bonuses and options that focus on the next few years so they are not really interested in how profitable a customer will be over the next ten years, only over the next one or two. Small businesses and family owned businesses are different, but for a big, widely held, professionally managed business the incentives are all short term.
may be true in the past, but a business cannot scale up good customer service - it's at best a linear scaling, where each new customer costs the same fixed amount due to needing high touch/people to manage that customer.
With the internet, businesses have found scaling to work better by ensuring your fixed costs stay fixed even if you scaled up customer count - this includes support/call centers etc. Without doing this, the business cannot scale up exponentially.
It is cheaper than British banks for international transfers. Its business accounts are both easier to open and cheaper to run than those of the banks.
You are right that transfers from personal bank accounts in the UK are usually free and rapid (usually immediate, guaranteed to be within two hours), and similar or better in many other places, but Wise still has an offering beyond that.
You missed the first step, which is to burn though tons of cash offering your services below cost, driving all competitors out of business. Then once you've done that, where else are they going to go?
I'd much prefer to use a company that spends 100% of the time on 80% of customers than one that spends 80% of it's time on 20% of the customers
OP can't even provide proof from the tax office of being at that address, it's an angry rant rather than the whole picture.
Would you go into business with him with nothing but a phone bill as proof?
Well, the article says otherwise. I think "The document was rejected because it was a tax invoice, not a bill." is a pretty lame rejection reason.
That being said, I didn't quite get the solution Wise suggested. Don't they already have a lease document for the new office? It looks like the author has omitted some crucial detail.
No other insights or discussion and the appeal process basally took months with nothing but an automated response.
I've given up on all these "fintech" companies and am using tradition banks.. at least there is regulations and they can't randomly decide to close your account and remain unresponsive when you require support.
I've been telling my loved ones to stay away from Wise, PayPal and similar services.
I couldn't log on, got the problem escalated, then they got me to create a logged session in their app, and from that they diagnosed the problem was due to larger text on a smaller screen causing their app to crash. I've rarely had technical faults diagnosed and fixed by any company.
Wise was very helpful in getting it resolved, and made it clear that if anything else came up, just reply to the e-mail anytime.
In Australia you can get a Company Extract from ASIC for $10. Apparently it's free in NZ [1].
I believe they haven't actually updated their registered company address for some reason, and that triggered Wise's systems.
[1] https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/help-cent...
At some point enforcement died. It used to be that locking someone out of their money would wind up with people in jail.
Now, it's not just a cost of doing business but also viewed as a positive by state actors.
See, for example, Section 37.002(c) of the Texas finance code: "An office or operation may not remain closed for more than three consecutive days, excluding days on which the bank is customarily closed, without the banking commissioner’s approval."
Laws like these were put in place because failing to disburse someone's money could cause a bank run.
Good in that you never have to speak to a salesperson, bad in that there will be no-one to take care of you if things go sideways.
On the other hand, as someone who did customer service in my younger years, 95% of calls were PEBKAC, so it's essentially a giant money drain for things of no real concern to you as a company.
I've often wondered how successful it would be to charge $3 or $5 per call, refunding the money in cases said call was needed.
I think Microsoft tried that at one point, but they didn't stick with it for some reason. Maybe it leads to a lot of knock-down, drag-out arguments about whose fault something is.