Who did you talk to? Certainly not the front line CS rep...

they might freeze my account. they may even cancel my account. no one can stop them from choosing to not do business with you or me.
but are you suggesting that they would attempt to seize a customer's funds and keep someone's money for themselves, like a common robber? are there any known cases of them outright stealing someone's money? that would surprise me. they have a profitable business model as it is, built on trust. they do not need more money than they are earning. why would they risk losing the trust of their customers by stealing their customer's money?
in my one dispute with incomm, which i believe runs the my vanilla debit program, i just needed to politely mention that i would prefer to resolve the dispute over the phone than undergo arbitration. no one wants arbitration, its expensive for everyone, especially them. in my case, it was clear that the money was mine, it could not be debated. there was no move to make other than release my funds to me.
the most important thing is to be honest and right. if you are honest and right, they will treat you accordingly.

well my dispute involved incomm, which i believe runs the myvanilla debit card. however, in my case, the matter involved a paypal mycash card that was paid for but not activated/loaded. its true that the cs rep tried to give me the runaround at first. he said that i would need to contact paypal to resolve the issue. i am not sure if he was stupid or just trying to give me the runaround. but i plainly told him he was wrong and mentioned the possible need to arbitrate the matter. he then asked for my pin, put me on hold, and came back to tell me that there was some unknown issue with my card and that i would need to send all documentation to premium_fax. after 3 weeks they didnt get back to me, so i was a little mad about that. i decided to call and as you know, you must enter your pin to even reach a cs agent. when i entered my pin, the recording told me i had $500 on my card, so they just loaded my cards without telling me. but needless to say that money was quickly moved to my bank asap.

netspend also froze my account. of course netspend is run by a different outfit, but i read the horror stories of people having to fax copies of their id, ss card, etc, to get their account unfrozen, only to face delay delay delay and i wasn't about to deal with that nonsense, so i mentioned the possible need to arbitrate. they unfroze my account by the end of the call if i promised to "use my card for everyday spending". they said my account was frozen for "abusing cc rewards programs" and they noticed i buy lots of vrs and actually asked me how i pay for them. it was pretty weird, but there was no doubt that they were breaching their fiduciary duty to me and their actions possibly amounted to conversion, so i was certain they would see the light and unfreeze my funds, which they did.

i have not used my netspend card since. of course if i ramped down my ms with netspend i could be under the radar. but i believe in the free market, which requires consumers to not use a merchant/product if the merchant/product is inferior or disrespectful of the consumers. netspend does not deserve to be paid through any fees i may incur. as long as we keep using these financial products they will continue to profit and nothing will get better, there is no incentive on their part to improve. in the free market when someone acts like these companies do, freezing people's accounts, it is assumed people stop using the service and they improve or die off (and get replaced with a more favorable alternative). sorry for my rant.

Meh - financial institutions have been known to game LIBOR rates, cheat their customers on a global scale and illegally foreclose on people's homes. The argument that they have no reason to risk losing the trust of their customers by stealing their customer's money holds no weight. If you treat them honest and right they will do the same? Take my advice and don't drink any Kool-Aid offered by Bernie Madoff and his ilk!

Yeah.....right.
Be honest with common thugs like these.:mad:

Be surprised...........
Read my post two pages back. My transaction was voided by my bank minutes after the attempt @CA and more than a month after they are still holding onto my money saying that there is a pre-authorisation by my bank on the account. The CSR told me that the money cannot be released until November 2014!
Asking me to jump through hoops (like getting a "Merchant Release" letter from the bank) to give my money back to me.:(
My bank is saying that since the transaction was "voided" they cannot issue a "Merchant Release" letter since there is nothing to release!

Maybe a fairy.........;)

What will U do? may be small claims court?

I am writing to FTC. That usually works.

No luck finding a rep that would help, eh?

You may want to consider filing complaint directly with FDIC because it may be forwarded to them anyway.
That is what happened with complaint I filed with CFPB against another Incomm/Bancorp related company.

hi, i pm'ed you. i know the feeling of not having 100% complete control of all your money at all times, it makes my stomach ache! but to be fair i do not believe your situation is one like i am describing. everyone knows when there is an authorization on a cc/debit/prepaid card, that even tho the money is not taken yet, it still reduces the balance available. then later the money is either taken or not taken and the authorization drops off.
its also my understanding that the entity (bank in your case) with the authorization gets to decide when it drops off. I might be wrong about this however and would urge you to confirm if I am right. But if I am right, it sounds like your bank's network is refusing to drop the authorization in their computers.
if incomm makes your funds available to you while the authorization is in place, you can get your $500 from incomm and they are legally required to honor the authorization when/if your bank decides to also ask for another $500. incomm won't let you overdrawing your account even be a possibility, so they will lower your balance until the authorization drops off.
sounds to me like your bank is the bad guy here for having a stupid authorization that lasts forever. I would be in touch with them on a regular basis to get them to lift the authorization, not by sending letters but by doing it in their payment computer networks.
sorry but i still fail to see incomm as the bad guy here.

thats a good enough point, that sometimes people in the financial industry do abuse trust. if there is an instance where someone kept their receipts/cards, is legit, and incomm outright steals their money then i will eat my hat. but i would resist painting all businesses in the financial industry with a broad stroke and saying just because bernie was the devil it necessarily follows that those incomm folks down in georgia are too. people on the street may ask why i have started wearing a pumpkin pie on my head, but given my statements here, its safer to wear an edible hat for the next couple of months.
but seriously we must keep in mind that these incomm people are dealing with undesirables that peel the sticker off the backs of VR cards. when someone calls incomm cs, they dont know if you are a legit ms'er or an atlanta cvs sticker peeler. so they will require you to back up your claims with receipts, activation slips, screenshots, copies of the VRs in question, etc... any person with proper diligence will retain their receipts. but can we really get mad at incomm if someone calls them and says "i bought a VR and tried to load it but the load process failed, i threw away all my receipts and also threw away the vr, send me $503.95 or i will sue you".
on the few occasions i called, it was because the clerk at the merchant screwed up the activation process, by starting the transaction, cancelling it for some reason, then trying to reactivate the previously cancelled card. it screws something up every time. but i keep all my documents. if there is a problem i am polite to the incomm cs rep and provide all documents. i have never had any problems. i imagine no one would, so long as they enter into each transaction assuming there might be a problem and they should keep their receipts, etc. its the person who throws everything away, has a problem with the vr, and then makes it very clear to the incomm cs rep that they are not familiar with the terms and conditions of the card by threatening a lawsuit when that right is waived.
what would you all do if someone called you like that and you were the incomm agent? take them at their word that you owe them $500?

Guess you couldn't find my original post regarding the issue. I have quoted it here.
Since then, I managed to get the "Merchant copies" of the VOIDED transactions. The transactions were VOIDED less than a minute and half of the preauthorization. No wonder my bank doesn't want to give me the "Merchant release letter" since the preauthorization lasted for less than a minute and half!
Now, tell me, incomm don't have access to that information?
Looks to me they want to hold on to my money for as long as possible which is also proved by the fact that they told me over the phone that they will hold my money hostage for an entire year unless I get the "Merchant release letter" from my bank!
My suspicion is further strengthened by many posts here that they take multiple attempts to "receive" the required documents.
I am not saying that my bank or any bank for that matter are any saints but they are a much higher level robbers than incomm.

no i did find the post, where the bank teller screwed up the amount she was advancing from mvd, then tried to advance more money without taking into account the ca fee, and cancelling both transactions even tho mvd authorized the transfer. i am not sure i understand what you are saying about "preauthorizations" lasting "a minute and a half". clearly the authorizations are lasting longer than that or they would have dropped off your account by now.
but to answer your question, i have no reason to believe that incomm would have access to information in your bank's computers concerning this transaction.
what is stopping you from explaining this mess to your bank, explaining that the teller's screwup is causing this mess, and getting a copy of the "merchant release letter" that incomm requested?

edit: here is a website that supports what i believe about the bank deciding how long the authorization lasts: http://shopper.esellerate.net/link/p...urchase-failed
if you read it at the very end, you should be able to contact your bank and they can tell you when the authorization will end, hopefully less than a year.

You just proved the point I am trying to make.
However, you are confusing who is the bank in my case.
Incomm is the bank in my case since it's their debit card which was used and according to the article you quoted it's the "bank" (incomm) which has access to this information NOT the merchant.
.
This makes perfect sense since incomm rep told me that the preauthorization will stay for the entire 12 months unless I get a "Merchant release letter".
My point is, Incomm must be able to have access to all the transactions on an account issued by them including VOIDED transactions.
However, very conveniently they are only seeing preauthorization and NOT the VOIDED transaction which is very clearly recorded on the receipts given to me.