BenH

Just an FYI and a request for info on similar experiences from others.

I decided to pick up a WM Preferred Money card the other week as an alternative outlet for liquidating GCs at WM. The preferred card is nice since it has no monthly fees if you load at least $500 a month.

I purchased it at the checkout counter using a $100 GC as payment. I put $94 on the card as it had a $6 fee - to make an even $100.

I activated the card later that night at home online and everything seemed to be fine - they were supposed to be sending me a permanent card.

I was going out of town this week for the rest of the month, and I didn't think I was going to get the permanent card before I left. As I didn't want to pay the monthly fee, I wanted to load more money on the card before I left.

I took the temp card back to WM and tried to load $500 on it from a GC. The transaction seemed to go through properly, but then spit out a declined message. I decided to load directly from my bank debit account, but the same thing happened. To make sure the cashier wasn't doing something wrong, I went to the MoneyCenter and they also had the same result loading from my bank card.

Last night I checked my account online and it wouldn't allow me to access all parts of my account page - telling me I needed to call in. This morning I called in and was given automated messages stating that my card was closed after a review of my account and all I could do was press '*' to acknowledge this and access the funds that were on my card.

There was no way for me to get in touch with a human. All I could do was send an online form - which I will wait to hear back from.

I know that people have had accounts closed before by GreenDot - but this seems awfully quick.

The only GD product I have or have ever used is GoBank - and my account with them their appears to still be in good standing.

Does anyone have similar experience and/or know if there is any recourse? My hope is I get to speak with a human at some point and simply please my case. I think the only suspicious thing that I did was try to load it with a GC on the first attempt - but I don't think GD knows what method you use to load it when you do it at a WM (meaning they don't know if the debit is a true debit or a GC). Or, just the fact that I tried to do a $500 load (?).

I guess this may not be news to anyone familiar with GD shutdowns, and I don't know if the WM card is somehow more finicky than the others...