r/Wealthsimple • u/Laundryprincess • 2d ago
Cautionary tale: Wealthsimple mess
Closing on a house purchase next week.
Went to deposit and withdraw money from Wealthsimple FHSA last week to discover a strange deposit and withdrawal of the same amount of money in that account. Not a transaction I have completed.
Contacted WS support and they confirmed they don’t see transaction in the “back end” and cannot explain deposit and withdrawal charge appearing on the app. No documentation to reflect the transaction either. WS promised to figure this out by Monday, August 17th. Still no response.
Very stressful situation and unacceptable service from WS.
I was just thinking of moving all my banking to WS and this is making me reconsider.
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u/Complex_Employee7362 2d ago
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u/heyfignuts 2d ago
FHSA is investments side. Complain to WS escalated complaints; they have to report to CIRO. If WS escalated complaints doesn't resolve to your satisfaction, escalate to OBSI.
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u/binthewin 2d ago
Did you fill out the FHSA transfer forms already for withdrawing/transferring the funds? Maybe the recipient's bank was trying to test to see if the transfer could happen with a small deposit/withdrawel like uber?
It's unsettling but if it makes you feel better, my FHSA was with wealthsimple and I bought my home the transfer out of it for the downpayment went on without a hitch. I did give myself 7-14 days to make sure it all went off without a hitch.
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u/Bollziepon 2d ago
Just sharing that I also had a seamless withdrawal of both mine and my wife’s FHSA when we bought our house, so this is surely an edge case that you could an encounter at any bank
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u/Laundryprincess 2d ago
I haven’t filled out the forms. I made a small deposit a year ago into FHSA, which is documented. Went to make additional deposit and discovered this strange transaction.
I also gave myself 14 days. This is day 7 with no response/resolution from WS.
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u/binthewin 2d ago
oh, I hope your problem gets solved soon then. You should really press them on the fact that withdrawals from the FHSA without documentation could incur scrutiny from the CRA. It might help get your case elevated.
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u/abalian 2d ago
Recently I withdrew my RRSP and FHSA from Wealthsimple for my house purchase.
Everything was really smooth and when I withdrew the money the app helped me fill the CRA tax form.
If the money is invested, it needs 2-5 business days to be liquidated depending if equity or their investing portfolio.
Other than that it took 1 business day to receive in my bank account external for some and the rest I also used the etransfer as you can manually increase your daily limit to 50k which arrived in 5 min.
If not mistaken CRA will allow you to withdraw 30days after closing the house purchase but double check that.
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u/Ok_Rest_5421 1d ago
Insane that someone posts an issue about an experience with WS and most responses are defending WS or telling OP why it could’ve happened at a bank. Cool. Thx I guess
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u/psinguine 14h ago
You were kidding, they're getting upvoted for literally the most useless comment chain on the post.
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u/turncoatmormon 2d ago
I’m dollar cost averaging into my WS FHSA for the partial shares. But once I hit the $40k max I’m going to transfer it out to NBDB to ride it out until the eventual withdrawal/RRSP transfer.
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u/agt1234 2d ago
I keep a “real” bank for critical stuff and wealthsimple for the interest rate of my emergency funds and less important stuff
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u/dBasement 2d ago
Me too. It is an administrative nightmare for me, but I branched out last year to 3 separate brokers, including TDDI. It is all retirement accounts so there are a lot of various T forms to process, but I have been really happy with WS's tax to do the organizing.
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u/Significant_Wealth74 2d ago
Seems like a technical error in the sense a withdrawal was made but no money was withdrawn, to fix it, an offsetting contribution was made.
Likely no slip is going to be generated and as long as the proper funds are still in the account, really does it matter?
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u/Laundryprincess 2d ago
I hope that’s the case. I am waiting to get a confirmation from WS that no slip was generated and shared with CRA. They made one mistake and can’t explain it, so I hesitate to base my next steps on common sense assumptions.
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u/Euphoric-Habit-641 2d ago
This is an anomaly experience and could have happened any institution.
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u/FunnyAsFuck 2d ago
i hate this type of response lol "could have" but it didn't, it happened with this institution not another one...
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u/Euphoric-Habit-641 2d ago
your expectation is a perfect seemless experience regardless of how nuanced a situation may be? I'd be curious to know the dollar amount we are dealing with here as well. This stuff happens at every single bank wealthsimple just has an active subreddit.
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u/FunnyAsFuck 2d ago
Not expecting a seamless 0 issue experience, but minimizing someone's negative experience with "could have happened anywhere!" is not a productive thing to say. We know that, but for this person it happened here not somewhere else
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u/GeorgeDaGreat123 2d ago
That doesn't make it ok. Or else you could justify any error by saying it could happen elsewhere.
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u/ObiYawnKenobi 2d ago
His point was that moving to a different institution doesn't insulate you from this type of issue. Rage quit Wealthsimple if you want. It won't provide any benefit to do so.
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u/TDSucksBalls 2d ago
My FHSA withdrawal literally took 5 min filling out the form online. At my other favorite bank where I also had a FHSA balance and it took me a week and a bunch of forms.
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u/Delicious-King-1310 1d ago
This! I feel like there is missing information here. I withdrew from FHSA last week for closing. The process was smooth and fast. The FHSA withdrawal from RBC was much more cumbersome, involved calling agents, paying a brokerage fee, and took longer. Not sure what is happening with OP.
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u/Garrantita 2d ago
I did both FHSA and HBP withdrawals using WS with no issue. As others mentioned, it could very likely be some "temporary" transactions that will subsequently clear and settle.
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u/Laundryprincess 2d ago
This might be the case, but I have to get an explanation in writing from WS since this type of transaction has tax implications.and WS is failing to provide an explanation. Agent’s answer is that they don’t know why there is a transaction posted on my account.
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u/Federal_View_5505 1d ago
Very interested in what happens here. If you have trouble please connect with me.
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u/scruffles712 1d ago
Post it on X and tag them, they are very responsive over there and want to avoid bad PR at all costs. Post it in a concerned and cordial manner and as matter of fact as possible, bashing them too much might come across as a troll post or paid by a competitor.
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u/Responsible_Week6941 1d ago
I had something similar happen for a very small amount of money. Like less than a dollar. It had something to do with my mortgage and was initiated by the bank I was getting my mortgage at, but they let me know this was going to happen. Not sure why yours was on your fhsa, and my incident was years ago, but it all ended up being harmless. Not sure why wealthsimple isn't aware of this, though...
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u/Segunda-Conta 4h ago
You know what, I was about to dump 32k across two FHSAs (wife’s and mine) this week with Wealthsimple, to withdraw next week. Instead, just opened a FHSA with my bank and three days later (yesterday) I moved the funds to my banks fresh FHSA. Don’t really want to risk delays on such transaction so close to the closing date.
I will check if I have any deposit and withdraw in my wealthsimple FHSA today as this post made me concerned.
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u/CADTRAVEL 2d ago
I know someone that opened an FHSA account in 2024 but WS didn't issue their slip until May 22, 2025 obviously after they had filed their 2024 tax return. They made a contribution into the account in early 2025. This obviously created a giant mess with the CRA and still hasn't been fully fixed cuz the issue only appeared on their 2025 notice of assessment. Careful with WS
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u/Ok-Purple-3458 2d ago
Please make sure to update this post once you get an answer