Revolut - Mobile Finance 4+

Don’t be dazzled by their slick app. I (stupidly, in hindsight) transferred all my holiday spending money from my personal Bank account (with the same account holder name that matches my revolut account) the day before going abroad only to be notified that the transaction is pending while they continue to do their checks. 4 days have passed and nobody has got back to ask me to provide any further additional information to help speed up this process to release the funds. I’m literally begging them to tell me what Information I can send to help speed up this process so they can release my funds and unlock my account but all I get from using their online chat are endless replies from their autobots telling me how sorry they are for this delay, not to worry because it’s been elevated to correct department and to hope I have an amazing day! With lots of cute smiley faces and emojis. 4 days of no access to my funds in a foreign country with a young family and self catering. Unfortunately while trying to explain this through their online chat (because it’s impossible to actually call and speak with someone), all I get is the super polite autobot replies. You have been warned.

A few months ago I would’ve given this a five. As someone who needs to make several small exchanges each year this app was marvellous, even though I find it really difficult to navigate the app. It’s just taken me half an hour to make a payment to a new person, but I suppose it might become easier if I could make more payments more frequently. I have recently become very disappointed when the amount of inclusive exchange was drastically reduced from £5000 to £1000 per month. Whilst I may not need to use the app every month, I now need to be very organised to escape exchange fees. I believe I can get a better deal if I go to my foreign exchange when I have to pay fees. Having said that I haven’t needed to do that yet as I am just organising better. I also find it very difficult, firstly not being able to speak to someone and secondly I just can’t find the dashboard or online chat section. I am confused as to how often I can make transfers for free as I know that there has been a big shake up with the T&Cs ie if I exchange £1000, can I then transfer £100 to 10 different a/c or is there a restriction on how many people I pay a year? My last problem is that having changed my phone, the app now does not work on the phone. It will not recognise my pin number (which hasn’t changed) and it will not recognise my fingerprint. Maybe that could get sorted out if I could actually find the online chat function.

I joined Revolut in spite of the worrying things I had heard about them freezing accounts, I just thought they must have a good reason for it. But then I (almost) experienced the exact same thing. And no one replied to me for for more than two days. I had two payments for significant amounts pending during this time, which was incredibly stressful! They finally said that I couldn’t make any more payments to the account although I would be able to make payments out with the remaining balance. Fine. THEN two weeks later I get another message from them asking for the same documents that I’ve already told them I don’t have! Cue another load of stress and panic that they will freeze my account. Their service in general is complete joke, it is not a replacement for real human contact, I’ve now spoken to 5-6 people on their chat system and only once did I feel like I was talking to an actual person. (I’ve still not had an answer as to why they contacted me again despite asking them four times in the chat) IF you are going to use Revolut, first take a look at their community pages and all the people who are stuck with a frozen account with no one responding to them! If you are still going to open an account anyway, please please realise that they are NOT a replacement for your regular bank, and please please don’t trust them with large amounts of money. Their service is not at all what they claim to offer.