So I wanted to send some money to a cousin who is having some financial challenges. When I was younger, the logical thing would be to use Western Union to wire money; but that is no longer the best solution. It could be, but Western Union has the worst web design on the planet, so online transactions never work (tried eight separate times this morning), phone transactions are predictably horrible (Western Union is not alone in this, but they are no better than the worst phone menu fiascos) and even in person they fail to get the job done. Aside from all that they are really expensive (12% for “Money in Minutes” to any Western Union location, or 5% for “Economy” which can only send money to a recipient’s bank accounts… Uh, Western Union, my bank only charges me $10 to wire any amount to another bank account. Wake up and smell the coffee, oh, and my bank’s website actually works!
Western Union: Epic Fail
I ended up sending money the old fashioned way, putting a check in the U.S. Mail. What a waste of my morning, sure wish I could bill Western Union for the wasted time.
By worst web design:
1) requires non-standard crappy browsers, neither Safari nor Firefox worked on the Western Union site
2) captcha is illegible most of the time
3) site frequently causes the session to reset, forcing you to re-enter the same information again and again
4) credit card transaction fails frequently
5) whole site crashed after I’d entered all the information for the 8th time – gave up
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