I was looking to take out €4k ($5k) using western Union as I'm flying to a cash based country.

I visited 7 western unions and they were amazed at such a large amount of cash. One gasped. Many said “that's a lot of money” or “too much, we don't have” despite them being banks or post offices.

It took me 4 hours to find a western Union that would allow it. It was in CENTRAL Paris and was some fancy building. It took them about the “authorization of the manager” to get a whole €4k.

Are French people really that poor? Or is it that criminals use western Union a lot? I got so many suspicious looks