1115.org

We are all familiar with the concept of predatory lending practices. And the unconscionably obscene profits earned, for example, by lenders who make payday loans.

How about predatory remittance services? Can you think of anything more unconscionably obscene than this:

U.S. immigrant groups are ratcheting up a boycott of Western Union Co. in hopes of forcing the global money-transfer industry to do good for its customers’ families, not just do well for itself.

Foreign workers complain that wire-transfer firms set extortionate fees and exchange rates, and that the industry fails to reinvest in the very communities from which it profits. Western Union is being targeted for its size: It is the biggest player in the United States and ranks among the largest in the world.

Immigrant workers in the United States send home some $70 billion in earnings a year and the firms handling this trade skim more than $14 billion a year, mainly in transaction fees, market analysts say.

I still have trouble believing those numbers. Western Union has been getting away with this for years? Charging an average of 20% in fees for handling remittances? Holy effing oxcrap! I’m sure there are some words cunningly concealed in the English language somewhere to adequately describe such corporate behavior. But “extortionate” really doesn’t seem to do justice to such colossal and brazen Sheriff-of-Nottingham-ery.

(If the average is 20%, there are some poor buggers somewhere who presumably don’t understand that they’re paying 40% or 50%.)

If you know anyone who uses Western Union for anything, I hope you will consider explaining to them that it’s the moral equivalent of personally attaching electrodes to the genitals of Abu Ghraib prisoners.

If you have ever used Western Union in the past, please know that the only path to salvation is to never use them again.

Western Union takes in $4.5 billion dollars in revenue each year. Stung to the quick by these allegations from U.S. immigrant groups, it has generously decided that to show it has its heart in the right place, “it would give away $50 million in educational and economic charity over the next five years”.

Let’s see, that’s 0.2% of its annual revenue. Which means, in effect, that instead of swallowing 20% in fees, they’ll now be swallowing only 19.96% of their imputed remittance value of $22.5 billion.

Why are people not lining up to say: “Thank you, thank you, Western U”?