Complaint Review: Netspend - Nationwide

Something that should have been so simple was not accomplished this past April: Obtaining a prepaid PayPal debit card for me with my mother as an authorized user so she could travel without the danger of having cash.

As a result of my experience with their partner, Netspend (and PayPal's non-response to my complaints), I am closing my PayPal account this week after being with them for 15 years. I sent their legal department a very detailed letter in April outlining my concerns. I copied the six-page letter as a complaint to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), California Attorney General (re PayPal), Texas Attorney General (to deal with Netspend, as they are based there), Federal Trade Commission, members of the media, you name it.

PayPal never responded to my original letter to their legal department regarding my horrific experience. The only reason I heard from them months after my complaint was they decided to answer my complaint with the California Attorney General; otherwise, never would have heard back a thing. Their response was nonsense and in no way came close to resolving my concerns nor did it assure me that they would cut ties with Netspend so that others would not fall victim to Netspend's atrocious practices!

Netspend, who manages this prepaid card product for PayPal has got to be one of the most horrific and non-consumer-friendly companies in the United States. They treated me like dirt, kept making mistakes, made repeated requests for ID, made promises, more mistakes, it never ended. I documented every single call and email with them. They would say "Okay, everything is set. Cards are on the way" only to receive a TEXT message the next day "Cards reported lost or stolen; please call us to request new cards." Um, the cards couldn't be lost or stolen within 24 hours, they aren't manufactured and put in the mail within 24 hours, duh.

So I wasted precious time with complete idiots at Netspend, supervisors, supervisors' supervisors, you name it. As a result, I went through like 10 Xanax over a one-week period, not lying! They didn't care at all about my threats to file complaints with BBB, attorneys general offices, etc. So a second time they said, "Oh, that shouldn't have happened, everything is good on our end, cards are on the way." Guess what? Same bull. Text message received stating "Cards lost/stolen, please call."

So I thought to myself "What is up with this company? This is really bad." At that point, I went to the BBB.org website, and an alert was there for all to see regarding Netspend from March 2017 about how Netspend had settled a case with the federal government agreeing to pay consumers more than $50 million in damages. Had I seen that before applying for this prepaid card, I would have never have wasted my time.

Calls to PayPal supervisors during my ordeal were fruitless. "Let me transfer you to Netspend, " and I would say, "No way, don't bother. Someone has to do something at PayPal. You are authorizing them to process these cards and they will drag down whatever reputation you have left."

PayPal, unfortunately, could give a s**t that I have been a business customer of theirs for all these years. Because of this recent experience, I discovered an alternative company for me to accept credit cards from my clients (Wave, in Canada) and now have my payments, invoicing and accounting all with Wave. Very cool to have everything under one roof, with no software to pay for every year and I go to one site on the cloud for my financial matters. So that is a silver lining to this terrible experience with Netspend and PayPal.

I have zeroed out my PayPal account and am officially closing it this week. I cannot do business with a company such as PayPal that cares so little for their customers (who they make a ton of money from in fees).