Hi all,
Just wanted to share a very bad experience I had with Oanda today.
To explain my situation: I am living in France near the Swiss border, working in Switzerland, earning my salary in Swiss francs and spending most of it in Euros in France.
I have been using Oanda over the past 4-5 years to convert once per year relatively large sums of money from CHF to EUR at attractive rates (used to be called fxGlobalTransfer) and was quite happy with the service.
Today, my wire transfer to Oanda has been rejected. The reason that they stated for rejecting the transfer is that my cumulative deposits to Oanda over the past four years (that had been withdrawn and spent) exceeded my current net worth. I tried to argue for more than a half an hour over the phone with them that the rule did not make any sense: if you convert money from one currency to another to meet your current liabilities, how are transactions from four years ago related to your current net worth? Nothing prevents me to transfer CHF to pay a bill in EUR from my own bank account as long as I have enough CHF. Why would I be prevented from doing this currency conversion through Oanda to have a more attractive rate?
But it did not convince the representative and my account was subsequently closed (on my demand, since I cannot transfer there anymore given that the sum of past transfers exceed my today’s net worth) and the funds returned (transfer commissions deducted, of course).
Has anyone had a similar experience with them? I find this rule quite absurd.