Complaint Review: BankFirst Vision - Prepaid Wired Plastic - Prepaid Visa Mastercard - Internet

What was the problem? In late June of 2008, two days before I was supposed to move to my new place to be exact, Vision Prepaid Visa cards (BankFirst of Sioux Falls) froze me out of my account by system glitch. This apparently happended to numerous customers of theirs across the country, according to one CS rep I talked to that day.

Here's how it went. Each time I tried to withdraw from an ATM, they reduced my balance by the amount but declined the withdrawel. After several hours on the phone they said it was their server issue and several customers were affected and it would be resolved within the next few business days. When they did finally resolve this I was advised by the phone CS rep that it was isolated to one issue, that a server replacement and other resolution measures had taken place, including a new CS agency and new Cs phone number and that this type of incidence could never happen again.

It happened again to me later in November of last year.

This time the person I spoke with required me to fax them copies of the ATM slips and my online transaction page, so they could "be sure" that I hadn't actually received the money. When I mention the other incident, they say oh well they didn't know anything about that but as far as they knew I could just be making false claims and pocketing the money. They wanted me to go out of my way back to the machine and write down the Vendor number and machine ID off of it also. I never did go back to the machine, I just guessed from the various numbers on the slip. Oh and they said it's the machine's fault bacause it was a code 56 of something, even though I was reading it right off the ATM slip where it said code 82 or something/contact your bank. It took a day or so for them to turn around and update my balance, once I called them back the next morning again, and then my card was deactivated and they had to reactivate my card or something.

Of course there were additional fees somewhere in there.

Well this morning on my way to work I go by the ATM, having recently had my IRS tax return direct deposited for my convenience, I figured I would take out some money for gas and routine things for the week and lo and behold, Declined.

After spending over 20 mins trying to get through to CS to no avail, and being that I have several hundred dollars in there and no pending transactions or payments, I am still perplexed why I can't just take $20 or so out. Suffice to say, when this is all over I will be ending services with them and finding another. Of course if I call they'll overcharge me on that too.

What Happened in the end? On the first occaision I actually sold some personal belongings (musical equipment etc) underpriced online, in order to have the available funds which I already was the owner of but unable to access. To try to complete the move as scheduled. As it was I also had to pay an extra days rent at the old place.

In the second situation, I had to do without some things for a day and of course had to send the fax in the next day and so on, at my expense/effort. plus the stress of realising that this could easily continue despite the assurance (lies?) of the previous rep.

In the third, I am still waiting for a response, I will say this much that I had my tax refund split between two accounts because I knew I was needing to find another card and was testing a new one out. Somehow I got that half several days (3 bus days) earlier than the exact same deposit source/time on this card. Wonder what they were doing with my money all that time.

UPDATE:

Of course a week later (after the IRS thing) I was charged a 2.95 fee, four

times for one day. I am certain I only called their telephone CS once, yet was then charged a transaction decline fee because the four 2.95 fees, which at the time were unknown to me, lowered me down below the amount I should have had in there the next time I tried to use this horrible card.

1 week later. I try to swipe a card, enter my pin, the machine has a button that sticks. They decline it, I try again and now I have the PIN right and it still declines, I used is as credit or POS or whatever. The next day Vision/BankFirst hit me for four 2.95 transaction decline fees. Now most cases it is pretty poor business practice to overhit someone for a single issue. For example a call drops, most cell services give you back that minute if you reconnect and so on, but this business, this card service, they write me back and tell me to contact the business that had ran my card and tell them not to swipe my card so many times. What?? Of course no grace on the fees.

I highly recommend anyone considering a direct deposit debit card to steer clear of anything from BankFirst of Sioux Falls (Wired Plastic, Vision Prepaid, Pre-cash Network) my experience with them mind you had been over several years.

These are only the glitches over the past year. I previously had a Wired Plastic from them on MasterCard and then they changed me to Visa with no heads up or explaination, just higher fees.

Now for me the bottom line is this. I don't have a lot of extra free time to waste chasing someone elses errors and saving every slip of paper that crosses my path, or back tracking to cover their mistakes and prove they aren't my mistakes. This to me seems unreasonable. I am going elsewhere, and would continue to do so until I find a fair place which appreciates the level of business I bring them.

Albert

Small Town, Oregon

U.S.A.