Hi, I am British but live in Japan, we have family ties in UK and in Japan, so we shuffle money from one end to the other on the rare occasions when the rate becomes favourable enough to earn something. It’s no risk for us because we are happy to use/keep the money at either end.
However, when we do want to make a transfer we use OFX to broker the deal. It took a lot of setting up and proving identity and sources of funds etc. I remember it was a lot of fuss trying to convince banks to release funds when we sent money to England a couple of years ago, and an absolut nightmare trying to send money back to Japan recently. I needed to make the payments from 3 accounts, but one bank put the transaction on hold due to possible fraud and said we had to call, but due to covid, waiting times were 1 to 2 hours calling Japan to UK. During the time I was trying to get through OFX tried to contact us to verify the deal by phone. My wife was unable to take the call because at work. They emailed us and asked for a good time to call. I replied within an hour and set up a time, but 20 mins after that they cancelled the transaction.
I managed to get through to UK bank and reassure them I was just sending money to myself, and they agreed to clear the block on the account. I called (and waited) to talk to OFX to find out why they cancelled the deal and ignored my email. They were not very apologetic and blamed coronavirus, but reinstated a new deal at a slightly better rate than before. But the bank blocked the payment again !!! Back to the 60 minute holds on the phone to UK and finally got them to make the payment. So now I have made 3 payments from different accounts but OFX is only recognising receipt of one of them and the current status is awaiting funds. I expect it will all clear itself up, and eventually the transfer will go through but I am left with dreading the prospect of ever trying to make another transaction like this ever again. It has taken me about 6-7 hours of (incredibly frustrating) effort over the last three days to achieve what should have taken 3 or 4 minutes.
My Question ??? Oh yes, sorry. Is everyone putting up with this kind of battle? Everytime I try to do anything with UK banks from Japan I get kicked around like a football trying to satisfy their anti laundering security and get trapped in catch 22s of can’t do either one first.
There must be an easier way ?? I was hoping to be able to respond in minutes to fluctuating rates and send the currency back and forth at will, but sadly that seems to be unrealistic.
Any advice guys ?