This is OT but might be of some interest to those of you making transactions across borders.
My gf is buying an apartment in Warsaw. She has family there acting as liason and is closing on a deal right now. She needed to wire some money for a (not an extreme amount, $1700), and used the Western Union branch on Mission and 19th in San Francisco. The money never got there. When she went back to the branch office to investigate, she was told that "she had come back, changed her mind, and the money was given back to her." It seems like someone forged her signature. She shamed the cashier into giving her a copy of that receipt, which has the forged signature (she says it's similar, but she can tell.) Anyway--this is obviously a local case, but you might want to stay away from that WU branch for now if you are in San Francisco. I told her to document all her emails and calls to her family in Poland, to make it clear that there was no reason for her to change her mind, and to involve the police as soon as possible. Has anyone gone through a similar ordeal with Western Union? How good are they at dealing with internal fraud? Any advice welcome... j ps: is there any other reliable way to wire money to Central Europe from the US? -- Juan Buhler Water Molotov: http://photoblog.jbuhler.com Slippery Slope: http://color.jbuhler.com
