Send Money Philippines

I would like to write about my experience with sending money to my girlfriend who lives in the Philippines while I’m in Australia.

I have used Western Union in the past but that is very expensive and you will pay high exchange rates so you get little for your dollar. It will also cost you about $25 au for the fee if sent online but a little cheaper if you process it through an Australian post outlet, don’t ask me why!

So I carried out some research and I heard about a place called OrbitRemit. So I tried them and I was very happy with my first transaction as the exchange rate was great and I got my first transfer free. My girlfriend had to pick the money up from her local province branch even though I requested a deliver to door method. They informed me that they don’t deliver to the door via email and kept me up to date all along and she picked up the money with no problems.

Unfortunately my second transaction with OrbitRemit was nearly the opposite of the first. I thought I would select “Pick Up” this time since they don’t deliver to her door. Anyway here is what I wrote to them so I will just copy & paste this to explain what happened:

Just thought I would resend this email as I got no reply! (over a week by this time) Edited I will also be reviewing your service on my own website and others.

This is just an official letter following the phone call earlier last week to mention how inconvenient it has been for me with using your service that the recipient had still not received her money after 4 days. It all started on Friday the 8th/ Oct when I thought to get a quick transaction I would go into my local Westpac bank and deposit the funds directly into your Westpac account as you say it is. So I get in there and they say I can’t enter the 8 digit transaction number as they only accept up to 7 digits in the bank. I even spoke to the bank manager who said nothing could be done unless I wanted to take a risk and not enter all the 8 digits.

So I come home and make a deposit directly with my own Westpac account and transfer the amount into your Westpac account. So shortly after I revived confirmation it was now in your account as this email confirms and it would take up to 24 hours to get to the person.

So all this time the recipient was expecting it and because this has been so slow it has now caused problems for us. It was now 4 days and going into a 5th day and the recipient had still not heard about the money been ready for her to pick up.

This is simply not acceptable and I expect an official apology as I have still not even had that yet.

She finally got her money on the 5th day in the late afternoon.

I also sent this email to the person who I was dealing with all along and this email was also completely ignored:

Hi,

Can I ask why it took so long and would I have to go through the same issues if I used your service again?

Anyway she finally got the money but it was 5 days later. The New Zealand representative was very slow and not that friendly to deal with. I also got absolutely no reply to the above email and also no reply to another email asking if I use their service again that I would have similar issues. That was a big let down and it is a shame they really can’t be bothered to email back about this really bad customer service.

Anyway there exchange rates are the best I have seen so I will continue to use them but I really hope and pray I don’t have to contact them for any help.

Edit: I had to contact them again and it was even worse, it was quite bad but the guy called me back after he calmed down to apologize. Unfortunately I can only keep using them unless I want to pay higher costs to Western Union. Fortunately I don’t have to send money an

I have also tried Exchange4Free but their exchange rate was really bad.

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