Suprise! Western Union Sucks

I’m in an extremely bitchy mood so I guess this is a good outlet for me. It’s not the I’m gonna stab you in the face kinda bitchy but more of a I want to just rant and rave kinda thing.

So my friend ugur’s dad sent him $3000 via western union so he could pay his tuition. Here is some background on the subject. Ugur is Turkish and the money was sent from Turkey, also his English is, well, not so well.

So ugur goes to a western union agent and is told that he needs a social security number to withdraw money. That’s stupid since the guy does not have one since he is not American. This should be pretty obvious to anyone with a brain.

He goes to Safeway, where he is told that they could not write checks for amounts less than $3001 dollars. He goes to money mart and is told he needs a social security number – yet again. After visiting about 10 western union agents, he comes to me asking for help.

This is where it gets stupid. I called Western Union to see what was happening. The guy with an very thick accent answered, we basically couldn’t understand each other (the reception is shit at school). He asked me if I would like to talk to somebody else. I told him to get someone who spoke Turkish so I could give the phone to my friend who was having the problem. After being put through to four different people who spoke french, arabic etc. they figured out that WU did not have a Turkish operator. That was fine. I gave up and explained the situation to the guy I was put through to.

I told him that my friend could not withdraw his money because WU agents asked for a social security number and my friend did not have one since he was a foreigner. The guy then told me to that Ugur needed to have two valid ids. the rest went something like this.

Me: He has his passport
WUGuy: Is it an American passport.
Me: no, it’s a Turkish passport. He’s Turkish.
WUGuy: Oh, We can’t accept that, it has to be an american passport.
Me: Are you telling me that foreigner’s cannot use western union.
WUGuy: No they can. They just have to use an id that’s accepted by the (in our case) state of California.
Me: A passport is universal.
WUGuy: Does he have a driver’s license?
Me: He has his Turkish driver’s license.
WUGuy: Nope, that’s not gonna work.
Me: So what should we do?
WUGuy: Let me talk to my supervisor to see if I have correct information.
**waits**
WUGuy: yeah, he needs to have an American ID. The sender should change the name to someone who has valid identification.

This pissed me off because the guy did not know what the hell he was talking about.

The next day I called back and the conversation went like this.

Me: I have a problem and I need it to be fixed. My friend was sent money from Turkey. He cannot withdraw the money because they ask for his social security number. He does not have one because he is not an American citizen. He has his Turkish passport. Passports are universal and the state of California accepts passports as valid identification. He has his Turkish driver’s license. Right now, If he was stopped by a cop and he showed his Turkish driver’s license the cop would accept it. It’s a valid, legal piece of identification.
WUGuy2: Ma’am. Those are valid IDs. They should work. If they say it doesn’t just tell them to call us and will validate the information.

So after hearing this we went to an WU agent.

Okay. This became too long. So, long story short. We walked from agent to agent until we found one that had enough cash (in the tenderloin) or was not run by a bunch of idiots. And finally got the money.

point of the story? do not use western union or something like that.