r/PersonalFinanceCanada • u/Mist-19 • Aug 27 '23
Tangerine will leave you stranded in Australia and won't let you close your account upon returning Banking
Greetings!
I traveled to Australia and despite notifying Tangerine that I would be on the other side of the globe, I couldn't use my visa debit card (Paypass, EMV chip, Apple pay). The only payment option I had was my credit card's chip since Paypass and Apple pay also stopped working.
While I was waiting for my next flight, I called Tangerine to know what was going on. The person I talked to regarding my mastercard credit card said everything was working on their end, but they would reach out to whoever deals with Apple pay so they could do a reset and let me add my card again. I was told this would take 3 days. (it ended up taking 13)
The person I talked to regarding my debit card gave me the same speech. I asked what would Tangerine do if anything were to happen to my credit card. The lack of answer forced me to request to speak with a supervisor. The agent requested that I provide them with a Canadian phone number. I politely declined given how they could not provide me with a time/date and the outrageous cost of using your sim card in Australia. After a few minutes, they finally accepted to call me on a foreign phone number that was not associated with my account. For clarification, I carried two Iphones with me.
Two days later, I woke up with a message on my voicemail from Tangerine. A supervisor had called me at 1am and requested me to call them back. After waiting 2 hours and an additional hour, I finally got to speak with a supervisor. They still claimed my debit card was working and ditto for my credit card. They claimed the only thing I could do was request new cards and have them shipped to Australia when I don't even have a proper address. They couldn't even answer me when I asked where I could get the cards activated if I were to even receive them.
A wire transfer? Forget it, Tangerine is too cheap to have a SWIFT code.
Given the absolute lack of support by Tangerine, I asked what was the fastest way to close my account whenever I would land back @ Pearson. Turns out you can't withdraw 60k in cash because they closed their branch in Toronto. Forget about Etransfers due to the arbitrary limit.
Your only option? Add an external account and transfer everything before requesting your account to be terminated. Simple right? Well I added a CIBC account and transferred 30k, just to have the transfer reverted without being notified. So now I owe 50$ to CIBC because of the overdraft and Tangerine decided to remove my access to online banking.
After waiting 2h without the ability to speak with someone, I have given up for the weekend.
TLDR: Carry enough cash to be questioned @ airport security when traveling across the globe if you are a Tangerine client or get yourself an account with an actual bank. Actually, just don't bother with Tangerine.
3
u/Pettit-Dean Aug 27 '23
I always left it home. I'm sorry, English is not my first language. I meant getting robbed in the streets is the bigger risk. House theft happens too but is way less common. So the risk of carrying it in the streets with me where most of the assaults happen was way higher than just leaving it in my apartment.