Complaint Review: upsidecard

I had my income tax refund put on a upside card for "convenience" sake. However, my experience with this company has been anything but "convenient".



They placed a hold on my funds supposedly because of the amount of the refund. I am a single working mother of two children, so my refund does amount to a nice chunk of change, but hey, I don't make the laws or set the rates,so...



After calling customer service and being passed around like a hot potato, I was finally given a fax # and instructed to send a copy of my state i.d. and verifaction of residence, and that upon reciept the funds would be released in as little as two hours.No problem, faxed the info in less than an hour.



The next day.....still no funds. Another call, 3 or 4 transfers later and now they need a copy of my W-2 form because the fax of my i.d. was unreadable.



Funny considering I kept a copy of the fax for my records and the i.d. was clearly legible.



Now I have no problem abiding by a company's terms and agreements but nowhere within them do they require providing ones W-2 form in order to release funds onto the card.



I requested to speak to thier fraud/loss prevention dept., but a Supervisor named Frances (employee #54572) couldn't or wouldn't provide me that info, saying I would have to call back on monday to speak to anyone else.



Three days may not seem long to most, but with rent, utilities, and lets not forget my 3year old sons Birthday coming up it was the last thing I needed to hear.



Today is Monday and it's the same story, no response from the "mysterious" dept. that handles these type of issues, but hey, just call back tomorrow and we'll be happy to give you the same runaround. In the meantime I still have rent, utilties, and a very heartbroken 3yr old.



For those of you who are thinking "why not just send the W-2"? Don't have one! I babysat and cleaned houses all last year to make ends meet. My return is sizable because of the child tax credit. Even so, I share my tax related information with the only entity I am required by law to share it with....the I.R.S.!



Never ever use this company for any financial purpose. They are holding my money hostage even though I've complied with everything they can legaly reqiure me to and here I sit flat broke, in debt, and at my wits end.



This company's practices sound not only fraudulent, but verging on out and out theft.