FairFX - Huge Problems While Abroad

[66Caunce]

This is the email I've just sent to FairFX after conversing with them while abroad. I would not recommend anyone use them after our experience. The basic story is that I tried to top up £550 on NYE - the payments failed. I thought nothing of it until I checked my banking app to find the funds had been taken. It was seven full days until this money was returned to me, on the penultimate day of our honeymoon:

"We have since returned home from our honeymoon and can safely say we will not be recommending FairFX currency cards to anyone after our experience, in fact, we'll be warning people to stay well away.

It was five full days before I received my refunds - seven days including the date the original transactions were made. During this time, it will be apparent that we didn't appreciate the stress of having less funds (and on one particular day, no funds at all) than originally budgeted for. The refunds came through on our penultimate day, too late to make amends for the errors caused by your website.

I have some questions I'd like answered:

1. You stated that your payment gateway had failed that night - if this was the case, why is the error message displayed without any warning that funds may now be in a 'holding account' with the customer's bank? If this was prominently displayed, I wouldn't have attempted another three transactions in the belief that my card had been blocked for use abroad.

2. If you were aware of this issue, why weren't all affected transactions refunded immediately? It took me to contact you via the 'abroad' email address (which is meant to get a faster response, yet each query still took 24 hours to resolve) to get the ball rolling.

3. I incurred bank charges due to entering my overdraft, charges related to having to use my debit card to withdraw cash from machines in the USA (precisely the reason I had the FairFX card) and additional charges from my bank for the currency conversion. In total, this error not only cost five days of stress during our honeymoon but also approximately £50 in cash which I won't see again unless rectified by yourselves. In addition, I was forced to make a humiliating call home to borrow funds due to this debacle, something we had no need to do prior to this.

I'm a poster on various travel forums, including the Dibb, and will be detailing my experience with FairFX in full online. The service is great when in the UK - top ups are easy and it is a good tool for taking advantage of favourable interest rates but I have now experienced what can happen when things go wrong abroad and being without half of our funds for half of our honeymoon is, and was, completely unacceptable.

I look forward to your response."

[Megandllsmum]

That's terrible and clearly put a spoil on your honeymoon, let us know what their response is. . . You worded your complaint very well, a lot better than I can ever do this sort of thing lol.
Not first time I've read on here fairfx have caused problems to oeople on holiday, then again that can probably be said for other prepaid cards too.
Hope you get a swift response.

[66Caunce]

It is true that this isn't a solely FairFX issue - it could, potentially, happen with any currency card. However, my partner had a card from EuroChange which worked perfectly - and, if we'd wanted, could withdraw cash at Disney with it. No problems with spending or top-ups at all over the fortnight with his card.

[taylaboo]

Sorry you had such a problem and on your honeymoon too. We always take cash and a cc in case we need more money. Will be interested to see how they respond.

[66Caunce]

Thanks. We took cash and used that first. The FairFX card was solely for the second week of the honeymoon (as we took a little more cash than covered by our insurance so wanted to use that up first). In hindsight, we'd have done it the other way round but we had no way of knowing this would happen.

Forgot to mention that three of the four transactions happened on NYE. They all came up as 'payment failed'. I called my bank to enquire about my card being blocked and my account balance was as expected. The funds were removed by the next day. Infuriating.

[Megandllsmum]

Originally Posted by 66Caunce

It is true that this isn't a solely FairFX issue - it could, potentially, happen with any currency card. However, my partner had a card from EuroChange which worked perfectly - and, if we'd wanted, could withdraw cash at Disney with it. No problems with spending or top-ups at all over the fortnight with his card.

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The last time there was a thread running on here about the fairfx card it was about them not working in the chase machines onsite at Disney, seeing as that was where we were staying it put us off, even though I knew the issue had been resolved. . . Things like that are enough to put me off plus it was our first trip to Florida and we were gittery about money worries anyway, between me and oh we had cash and mist if our spends on a thomson prepaid card and a thomas cook prepaid card both worked extremely well with no issues, if fact hopefully once the rate starts moving up . . . Hopefully we will be topping them up slowly for our next trip.

[Guest]

I don't think it's a problem specifically with fairfx. My friend took a eurochange card to Florida and had it randomly blocked for 5 days. Their customer service was terrible! I think this can happen with any of them. I've personally only ever had one minor problem with my fair fx card which they sorted quickly so I'm sticking with it!

[Suffolk dad]

I'm sticking with them too, never had any issues whatsoever during our 3 trips.

[Bigdrinks]

It's not that there was a problem, it's how FairFx dealt with it that's the issue!

All these companies are very good when everything is going swimmingly. It's when problems occur and how efficiently they deal with them is a true test of their 'service' !

[Guest]

Fair fx sorted my problem on a Sunday night (we were flying the next morning) via email when the office was closed. Eurochange told us that there was nothing wrong and hung up! That was enough to convince me lol!