• An outlook of the company’s history

Western Union is a popular cash transfer service that can be used to send money to anyone in the world. Many of the popular online  poker sites accept Western Union deposits , making it a good choice for those people that are looking to deposit cash. The fees for depositing with Western Union can be a bit excessive, so  instant echecks  really provide a better option. With that being said not everyone has a checking account that they want to use for  online poker deposits . This makes using Western Union can be a sensible alternative. The fee amount that you will pay will depend on the amount that you would like to send, and from which country you will be sending money.

Western Union has 450,000 agent locations in 200 countries around the world of which any of these can send money to the MTN Mobile Money subscribers in Uganda. MTN has about 2.5million Mobile Money users in Uganda, who equally would want to send funds abroad either for business or trade and therefore can use this service through Western Union.

• How do they present themselves

Today Western Union is primarily a financial services company and operates as a subsidiary of First Data. Money transfer, once an  ancillary  business, has become its chief source of revenue. Although Western Union still runs a version of its historic telegram service, telegrams now account for less than 1 percent of its business.

The effort to protect its historic name and preserve the reputation of its  lucrative  money transfer business did little to solve the company’s financial woes, and in 1994 its still-profitable businesses were sold to First Financial Management Corporation (FFMC) under the name Western Union Financial Services. Just one year later,  FFMC  merged with electronic commerce giant First Data Corporation.

• What do we see

In a recent attempt to transfer a certain amount of money from an European Country to Switzerland, came up a very ugly aspect related to WU policy, though carefully hidden in its public image: we tried to make the transaction online, we have been asked to register with their site and then we paid using the CC. But, surprise, though we were in their database with quite a few transactions, they charged the CC and after that denied our transaction without any reasonable explanation.

Regardless how strange it may sound, Western Union acted like a bandit, charged the CC and then blocked the transaction. Useless to say that they created us some troubles with this unexpected behaviour. Worse, they showed no respect to us as a reputable client.

• Instead of conclusions

We’ve found the overall ratio between fees and quality clearly against WU.  Though they initially just blocked the transaction:

in order to provide final approval for your transaction, we need additional information. Please contact us at 0800 99 709 or +30 211 211 6559 between 8:00 and 20:00 daily to speak with a Customer Service Representative and complete your order.

If we do not hear from you in the next 24 hours, we will cancel your money transfer and you will not be billed.

later on they they took our money and denied the transaction without many explanations:

Dear X,

Money Transfer Control Number [MTCN] is: 5366xxxxxx

We have received your order, however, we regret we are unable to process your transaction at this time.

We regret any inconvenience this action has caused. As an alternative, You can find an Agent location on our Web site.

Thank you for using Western Union!

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DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT US.

So if you guys are familiar with this kind of treatment, you might consider alternate methods when sending money. However when it comes reaching poor countries, WU might be the only operator available in the area.