I’ve always hated banks. I’ve hated them for a long time, since before I was ever introduced to the mental health system. My experiences over the years have pretty much always been negative. They are just corporate thieves, organised crime. You see enough headlines about mass criminal fraud, deception and banking collapses to justify the sort of opinion I hold. Silicon Valley I believe made all the headlines last month or whenever. Credit Suisse seems to be the latest massive brand bank to dodge up things a bit. Most of what I read is irrelevant to me. I’ve been in the poorest sector and margins of society for some time to have any effect on banking system and reading about billion dollar government bailouts or whatever is pretty fairytale stuff really. I do, however read the Financial Times and The Economist regularly though, mainly for decent non-financial related news. I’ve tweeted them both about this forthcoming article. I thought rather than just send a stream of tweets condemning Revolut that’ll get buried and ignored in #hashtag helI that I might as well give them the full monty End Of Terror trashing I usually reserved for mental health system enemies. SEO (Search engine Optimisation) should hopefully do its job and there’s some google juice out there I’m sure that could be a win-win scenario. If you really take pity on a poor wounded soldier then you can always use the little End Of Terror donate button (top right of website) to stop me from starving to death. 😉 The recent ethos is to do positive happy stuff on here but it’ll take some time to transition fully to that. So here we go. The latest sob story. Revolut…
If you are unfortunate enough to be a mental health system regular then you probably have to turn at some point to the social security safety net that we are lucky to have here in the U.K. that is the DWP benefits system. It’s not pleasant any of it really but it does help you and whereas nobody enjoys handouts, in particular mental health victims – it’s much better to have financial independence and freedom. Whereas I completely reject all mental health diagnoses and psychiatrists the rubbish they spout does qualify you for certain disability and sickness benefits. If you are a mental patient, in particular a new one and especially if you have lost your liberty and are detained, get hold of a social worker, a good one, get hold of a MIND advisor and get hold of the DWP itself and your local political representatives are always pretty useful contacts to help you out if you get stuck. It’s a very difficult application process and even if you do qualify it can take a long time to get payments and there can be a lot of issues especially around applications, Capita assessments etc. And problems. I won’t into the intricate details about the benefits system – this article isn’t about that – perhaps future articles could develop on the whole issues regarding this difficult subject. There is support out there and don’t despair. One of the sickest things I’ve witnessed in the past decade is reading about all the suicides and deaths due to PIP applications and sanctions etc. I know the statistics are pretty blatant and perhaps concealed and it’s a controversial issue that does need to be addressed at all levels. Especially during the #costoflivingcrisis, times are hard for all. If billionaire bankers are suffering with lower bonuses then trust me, at the other end of the spectrum, poor and often homeless mental patients are feeling the heat moreso.
Yesterday I was due a regular DWP payment. At 1700 it had not appeared in my Revolut account like it normally does. I immediately went into panic mode and started contacting Revolut to see what the issue was and to try and resolve it. 22 hours later and it hasn’t been sorted and is unresolved. Revolut have pretty much refused to engage and ignored most of the customer service correspondence with me. They have used a lot of AI automated response, had unacceptable delays of over an hour between messages. They won’t provide a phone number to speak to anyone. Their Twitter team and social media teams are equally ignorant and non-responsive and non helpful. From the outset they have shifted the blame onto the DWP. They have said that the payment is not there – it is nowhere in the Revolut system and the problem lies with the DWP. But despite much criticism of the DWP, and it is a nightmare having to speak to them with regard to telephone delays, they are still pretty consistent and if you qualify for the money from them they pay on time and unless you hear from them you can pretty much bank on that money going into your account. It’s government money at the end of the day and government do support the sick and disabled as much as possible as when they don’t it makes the government look bad. I’d heard about the Public and Commercial Services Union strikes that are affecting DWP staff as they take action. I thought maybe this could have affected the missing payment but there are no strikes this week. The last strike did affect some payments over the first May Bank holiday I just presumed there was an issue with the DWP, taking Revolut at face value. It’s all fair enough and it kept me waiting overnight anyway.
At 0800 this morning no sign of money in my Revolut Bank account, so I rang the DWP. (incidentally if you do have to ever ring the DWP, do it at 0800-0900 – you get through a lot quicker than at any other time of day where you normally have to wait at least half an hour). DWP confirmed that there wasn’t an issue their end. They said that the payment had left their system on June 1st and had been accepted by Revolut at that point in time. I re-engaged with Revolut customer services on the app straight away. Had to wait well over an hour for any response there. In the meantime I started tweeting Revolut and they hadn’t woken up at that point either. My phone was going bananas. I missed my credit card payments, my Tesco delivery payment didn’t go through so my weekly online grocery delivery had to be cancelled. Tesco engaged fully online and even when they said there were no more slots available this week, I got a phone call from a nice lady who said they would hold the delivery for the rest of the day and deliver later as soon as I could make the payment. Octopus Energy Direct Debit from Revolut also bounced but again, Octopus are great on twitter for customer services and to be fair to them they are about the best Energy firm out there in this crisis and have gone above and beyond in supporting me in so many ways. Seriously if it is wroth changing supplier get onto Octopus. green energy, an innovative digital, modern world friendly, rapidly expanding global responsible energy firm who aren’t just smoking cigars on a yacht like the rest of the energy supply market.
Revolut are, of course, a relatively new phenomenon I happened to be on a boat party sailing up and down the Thames and I’d say 70% of customers at the bar were waving Revolut cards at the barmaids with the other 30% using Monzo. colourful pretty cards for both companies, so silly me, sheep to the slaughter, got home to Wales and sacked off my old Nationwide bank and set up with Revolut, getting the full monty, 12.99 monthly metal plan so I could have my own super-duper shiny metal gold card (which broke within two weeks after I got it). I did say to myself -“don’t get carried away and over-excited” – Revolut are a bank after all and they’ll be stealing off you pretty soon like every other bank as long as the honeymoon may last. I loaded up on their stock system and did some currency exchanges and got all excited – I was the new Gordon Gecko – cash is King, Wolf of Wall Street, whatever. It was great until I tried to withdraw the share investment and cashout. It’s all done on the fly and instant them taking money off you but it takes well over two weeks to get the money back into a cash form in your account if you do make the mistake I did and invest in their ‘shares’ system – Just a warning for any people stupid enough to sign up with Revolut.
My first encounter with their shoddy customer service which is very appalling, especially appalling even in #brokenbritain where nothing at all works at all anywhere. They stand out above the crows with shocking poor customer service. You’d think with them being a digital only system that they’d be sharp on this but they really ain’t Just cowboys. A big selling point and the urban myth word-of-mouth endorsements from Revolut is that they are great to use abroad. I did use Revolut in Budapest recently and it was’t too bad to be honest but after the last day of dealing with the customer service with an issue while I am sat at home, I would dread to think how bad it would be if they left you stranded abroad or if you had to contact customer services out on foreign shores.
I finally got a response on customer service but I’m sure it wasn’t a human at the other end and is just a #GenAI chatbot, It keeps sending vague non relevant articles in the chat randomly. they did apologise on twitter at one point that it was a fully automated response in a DM that made no sense to the conversation at all. I explained what the DWP said. Revolut admitted then that they had an issue at their end but were very vague and could give no timescales or specific explanations. After half hour they were back blaming the DWP saying it was at their end and trying to shoo me. The gist was it was tough – nothing was happening – my money has disappeared and there is no explanation. It’s not their problem my Tesco delivery or energy bills or credit card payments. I was referred to their complaints system. I spoke to Action Fraud and reported the matter and they referred me to the Financial Services Ombudsman. So I screen-shotted all the evidence. Got the big file together and hammered out an email, copying in my MP Jessica Morden and MS John Griffiths just to report that Revolut are stealing DWP sick money. I’ve waited all day and no sign of the money nor any explanation. It is not satisfactory and I think it is just theft. I also copied in Gwent Police to an email but that is straightforward NFA (No further action) for them as they do that to all my stuff – you can just read all the nonsense about hem on this site to see how they will do nothing to help. there are worse End Of Terror enemies than plastic fake banks such as Revolut. I asked Revolut for clarity on where they stand regarding the Equality Act 2010 but they refused to engage or respond to this at all. I explained to them that I would be taking the mater public in my own attempt at justice on https://endofterror.org
I’ll ring and report to the DWP and wait for all the complaints etc to pass through. It will take time. I’ll have to readjust all my plans for the next couple of months and beg all the places I woe money to and put my life on hold. The good news is that we have a great food bank in Caldicot so I will head down there when it opens on Friday. Failing that, not much else can be done. Revolut you are thieves and are prey8ing on the sick and vulnerable and disabled. you should be ashamed of yourselves. Do yourselves a favour people and avoid Revolut bank. I doubt I’ll get justice, rarely do, but I hate tea leaves. Full stop.