It's not longer FNBM, hence the trouble
 

Their is something strange going on.

This card was handed out by the "First National Bank of Marin" but overnight the issued by on the webpage changed to "First Federal Savings Bank of the Midwest" and all load beside Direct Deposit and Moneygram has gone from the webpage functions, the FAQ and the Cardholder Agreement. The agreement also changed to the new bank.

I just was on to their Customer Service which now seam to be located in India as the guy was unable to communciate with me in english. He was starting to shout at me at one point. According to them they send out a notification in December and he is not able to resend me the notification again and said "go online and print the new T&C".

A supervisor confirmed that the credit card option is gone and will not come back. He also told me that the ABA is going to change and basicly said, it is my responsiblity to check the T&C reguarly for changes.

Another good option gone now.

Is the Wal_mart MO deal dead with Pin based Debit cards? I just went by there, and did the normal thing, and as soon as they tried to ring them up with Debit "Transaction not allowed" this is before I ever swiped my card, as I was buying lots of MO across a few debit cards, so they had typed 1000.00 debit, and it didn't know. Needless to say, 2 cashiers, and 3 CSM's couldn't figure it out. Cash office couldn't either, I just did this 2 weeks ago. Anyone else having trouble?

Where do I go now for unloading the debit cards?

I just spent $22 to get less than 500 miles...
 

As those who had once claimed otherwise can now see, changes do happen to these things, and it doesn't have anything to do with one little old person's activities or actions! They (the bank) lied to us all and said we got some memo, but I never got this memo! Did you? Did anyone?

No.

I tried all Friday to load and call CS. All phones were down. I tried and tried and then found some numbers for FNBM itself. But their web help people just put me thru to the same CS number... Then a fraud dept told me there was nothing they could do, so I got a supervisor who, toward the middle of our call, began to understand my concern: I was trying to do monetary transactions with a product that I understood to be run by them, and then I couldnt even call them to ask why things were changed on their web site, so obviously I was worried. She then put me on hold and came back telling me she too got the same phone problems! She suggested that maybe their systems were down and so I pleaded with her to find out more. I said someone there must have a personal cell number or fax number or email address of some employee and even if they couldnt tell me what it was, I wanted them to find out more and then fix it or let me know. She promised up and down that she would look into it and call me back at my office in 10 minutes but the only message on my machine after the meeting I had to go into was a blank sound with a hang up. Obviously this was her and I got nowhere. i figured at first I would just wait til Monday but now that I have just learned by reading your post that they have suddenly switched banks, I am rather upset. I would like to undo having this troublesome card. I was going to give it a chance and try to make some deposits and then get miles, but now I want my $19.95 fee back! I wont get it, I am certain, but that pisses me off. I will cash it out or pay a bill or something and get my money back in the morning, but I feel duped. I guess so did they by having a product that we would be able to earn miles on by using credit cards. Their way to prevent this was to switch banks on us without notice. A little harsh, don't you think? Wow.

Maybe the new bank can hear a little of our flack if we collectively compose some letter to the new managers about the lack of communication! In the meantime, one more gone... Oh well. it will have to be chalked up as a test that failed--unless I CAN get my fee back.

:(MM :td: :td: :td:

I had gotten NO notification about changes, was never told about any staff or bank switch by the SCR who had loaded fund for me over the phone when I tried it on Thursday, Feb 24, and I was able to load 100 online that morning, then 50 on the phone, and then nothing on Fri 25th. When I called the extension (x5666) of the manager who had straightened out my credit card stuff a few weeks ago, even his extension transfered me right to CS, and then the phone went dead shortly thereafter. No one at the actual Bank of Marin had any idea about this and they said there was no way to reach this dept... and the manager I got said it was run by an outside party called Star Concorde, which I could not find anywhere on the internet under any spelling I tried in google, etc. There was no local number and nothing else provided.

i got no memo. This is like the TPS reports in the movie, "Office Space"

This sucks. I will get my money out and yet it still sucks!
Why they do this to my peeepul?

I can confirm that TODAY at 11:00 AM PST I was able to get an $800 MO from walmart. Probably a problem with the card you have, or possibly (unlikely) with that particular Walmart.

I have had some success in the past with doinga teller cash advance on some gift cards... Have not tried wachovia but this may work. And what you need to do in order to make them think it is nothing but a normal Visa card is this:

take a sticker--like one of those small address lables that comes in the mail with your name preprinted on them, that may have something like a US flag or something on it, and cut that out, and stick it nicely over the word DEBIT across the front of the VBx card. then when you go to the bank to try the CA, it may work!

if not, well, we tried and are looking for other options.

:)MM

for that platinum card: First National Bank of Marin is now First Federal Savings?
 

This morning I did get thru to Chris Ann in CS and she was rude and stern. First she denied any problems with phones on Friday. I told her I received a voicemail from a manager at FNBM who said it was not working but then later it was back up again (I asked that manager Jenna to try and she did, and then did call me back after I left on Friday after all!). I then tried to get the name of the partner company or department that is this "accessmycard.com platinum gig.

Then I told her I never received a memmo and was upset about having bought this card that I had so many troubles for. I wanted to dispute that fee and ask about closing it out but she was very unwilling to help. I told her to put me thru to the manager, Colby Dixon, who I had been successful with weeks ago, and so I got his voicemail. I decided to call back again later and got Chris Ann again who was pretty pissy I must say. She gave me the CS address (A po box in NY) to write to and that's all.

Pretty eveil, Id say!

To cancel this card--whose terms and conditions DID change--one needs to pay $10. I have since used up all funds and paid a $1 fee for a purchase of exactly $493 this morning. My acct is ZERO and I will contact Mr Dixon again to make him help me out and not have to pay anything--and istead to get them to refund me that activation fee of $19.95 based on the fact that this thing has never ever worked smoothly for me since I have had it a month and a half!!

We will see.

In the meantime, I guess this is the bank that runs them now so we will see what they know (but the TOC still mentions FNBM)

I HAD THE WRONG FIRST FEDERAL... will update this soon!


:td: :td: :td: :td:

Why do you NEED to hide it? Won't they do a cash advance off a debit card?

...not in my experience. And once they view it as other than a credit card that makes you pay fees (even though we know it does not take some % fee from us) they will balk. better to just present it as the thing they are more used to, than something other than the norm. I have had narrow minded bank tellers who were about to run the card and do business with a smile actually stop in their turn from viewing me thru the glass window to the desk behind them that had the swiper on it actually turn around and tell me as cash advance will not work from a gift card or debit card. Then you tell them it will, then you ask them to try anyway, then another teller or a manager is there, and then you either get the "NO" or you get a bunch of slow moving overzealous and curious bank personnel giving you the suspcious eye. Some wont do it. those who will still sratch their heads and then decide to make a photocopy of the card and of your drivere's license. Now some banks want to do this anyway, and that's fine, but I'd rather it just be seen as standard procedure rather than because the eye in the sky is now trained on me because they think I am the next Savings and Loan scam guy!

I have had lots of experience with gift cards and the ways they are viewed in banks. used to cash out Charter One cards and they worked til the day CO stopped issuing them, but some banks will not allow it and for some cards, it will not even work. See if you can even DO a CA with these GCs first though... I have not reviewed the TOCs for the VBx cards, but it is worth a try for those who are having trouble. All I am saying is to make it something that, when you hand it to them, raises less bank flags than it may otherwise. Remember, the world of most bank junior tellers and CSRs is to not think outside the box. If you have to ask why they cant just try it anyway, imagine what they may be curious about. Why, you could be viewed as a fraudulent would-be schemer even before you ate another piece of candy that is provided to customers waiting at the glass window!

I would hide it. If everything works without a hitch, why, in a few weeks of doing this sort of thing, you will instead befriend those nice tellers and be buying them boxes of candy from the gift shop next door because they always take the time to do your manually swiped cash advance even when there is a busy line of people standing behind you at the bank each time you come in. They'll love ya! (yes, the two banks down the street from my office I used to use for CO cards still say hi to me when I stop in for anything these days. I used to tell them I cashed out loots of CCs for stuff I wanted to buy on Ebay or something--so it looked a bit more mainstream and human.)

;)MM

First National Bank of Marin prepaid/preloaded MC horrors continue!...
 

I have been trying to get to the bottom of a few things with this card and lemme tell ya: you think we were slick trying to earn a few miles off these casds while they accepted CCs for online loads?...

Well, this operation is a sham if I ever did see one! We are getting played and yeah, i never should have gotten the thing! You are all paying $30 to get a harsh lesson in credit card fraud and full on rip off and it is US who is gonan pay it unless we fight back now! It has to stop, and I for one am not going to be paying into this.

let me try to explain--this is an ongoing, realtime issue and $30 is real too if you consider how many others may have this card right now:

I was able to get my $493 out by making a purchase yesterday just to empty this card. My intent had origianlly been to load it up to 1 or 2k and then unload and do again many times for as many months as I could, and only pay the .75 cent fee to unload as previously discussed. My original intent had been to use it to get discounted miles but all along, everything I had been doing--everything any of us had been doing--with this card, was exact and legal according to their terms and conditions. You can load with a CC, X times per day or per week, and yada yada. I had problems from day one, and though some reading my posts may somehow think that's WHY I have more right now, I think that's hogwash. How can I be to blame if something I purchased went wrong? Sure, it could be bad luck, but is it really my fault the product (in this case the prepaid platinum MC) was a lemon from the get go? no. I was initally willing to spend the $19.95 fee if the thing actually worked for a while, but in my case, it never did and I have records/proof of this painstaking proof. But when they suddenly stopped accepting CCs, I wanted out and I wanted to get my fee refunded since the whole thing never worked right anyway. I chose to cash out and so I bailed, making my bal now = zero. The fee to purchase is $1 when I think it may have once been only .75cents but who cares about that. I am not going to dispute the costs to actually successfully use the card to purchase something (be it a MO or be it a bill pay, or some purchase to test it out, etc.) I had done 2 purchases total, and I had $494 in there as of yesterday AM but now it is $0 because I made it be so. This card, which never worked properly for me since I got it, cost me $19.95 to activate and it will cost $10 to cancel! That's $30 spent to get screwed, and the only other way out would be to wait til it expires which is 2 years from now. I do not plan to let them keep any of my money for 2 years, let alone 2 minutes. I zero'd it out and planned to call them to show why they should cancel without fees and also even refund all or most of my $19.95 initial fee. I figure it's like this:

You buy a new lawn mower from home Depot and bring it home to mow the lawn on day one. It always has problems and everyone tells you this or that, and that it must be user error. You can never get it to work and after enough hassle, you have to get bad CS to help you and you waste a lot of time going back and forth to the store or on the phone. You somehow get to mow the lawn once, but never does it run smoothly. And just when you think it's about to, after much pain and time, they recall the product, stop making parts and something else breaks right then and there. You go to return it, wanting to get back your money and wash your hands of it, but they have a fee or some issues with letting you do this! You never got the thing to do what you set out to use it for. You never got what you paid for anyway, and you have documentation to prove this. That is why I want out. Had this thing had some longevity in it, I could forego the reasonable request for a refund, and may even pay the close out fee, but seeing as how I had problems all along anyway--and then on top of that, the fact that CS was so entirely unreasonable each time I tried to get answers, I am not happy about paying them a red cent! Nor should anyone else be! Call me what you will, but if I were you, I'd join me and together, as a group, we can bring these scammers down, save a bunch of other would-be suckers, and get our money back now!

You see, when I called the 800 # on the back of my Platinum card yesterday--and I didnt even to mention canceling or refunding--I was surprised to find I was not going to get many answers about anything very easily. I was just trying to find out WHO owns them now. I told CS that I just wanted to get the name of the bank and then the company address and phone number that is not a PO box and not an 800#. CS would not provide this. I left a message for the manager who I had spoken with before named Colby Dixon and then at the very end of the day I called back to try to reach him again and this CSR whose name I never got started on me just like David Spade from the Capital One commercials. "NO, NO, NO, C.E-NO, NANKA!"

he sounded like Actor Don Knots and was actually admitting to me that yes, the fact I could not get information on who the bank was or where they were housed now sounded to me like a scam. He was laughing when I told him that I felt that I needed to speak with someone higher up who could assist me, even when I was telling him I was not upset with or arguing with him, but rather, I had an issue with the bank and just wanted to clear it up. All along, my tone and my words were calm and friendly but this guy was nuts. Then he hung up on me and so I gave up on calling the 800# CS for the day. I tried to get information from the actul First national bank of Marin and I learned that they have no idea someone bought the preloaded Master Card product--or at least half the CSRs there certainly had no idea. I finally got a Mr Michales at extenion 1397 and he seemed llike a rather nice, normal guy who said he would try to help me.

I had called FNBs lost and stolen card section (why do those lines always ask for your card number if you lost it?) and you have to wait a moment after it asks for a card number (because the MC ones we have wont actual work anyway) and then it gives you options to press on the phone. Option 2 gets you to CS and you have to explain your entire story or eventually get lucky enough to end up with a manager, which I finally did. But when calling him back, I had to ask them to put me over to Mr Michaels at x1397. When CS insisted on getting my acct number, I had to tell them it is about a product that is not part of an actual FNB acct but this manager knows what it is about.

Anyway, I had asked him to please find out who the bank who runs the prepaid MC was, and I explained how their phones had gone down and all about the weird CSRs there... He understood what I wanted and said he would call me back. they are on pacific time and yet, when Mr Michaels called me back, all he left on my voicemail was this:

Sir, I did call that 800# and it works fine, and this is their number and their PO box address. So we are all set here, ok..."

I called back, went thru the hoops and left him a voicemail again asking him specifically for their address and bank name.

there will certainly be more horror stories today. I do suggest others join me in the fight--and at least share similar stories, or you will all be paying them for their stupidity! Miles are not even the issue anymore. As far as they know (or any lawyer should ever know) we were loading these things to save up for a big purchase that would only take CCs and would be easier to manage in one's own personal finances than leaving the funds in a savings account... Knowing it was stored on the prepaid MC and knowing it would cost .75 cents to $1 to get the money would be incentive enough to just build it up with CC loads every week and let it sit there til the big purchases could be made. that is not only in affect what we were doing anyway, but it is what I am going to say my goals were all along should this thing escalate to some larger legal issue. Think about it.

Sorry to waste time of those not using the FNBM cards but all history of it I know of is in this thread. When a gift card dies, it usually costs us nothing but the roll-eyes hassle of trying to find another one. This one costs real money and that is something you should be concerned about!

MM

I emptied my card yesterday with a bill payment.

If you have a least 1 transaction every 90 days there is no fee on the card and once the card is expired there is no fee for closing it.

So what I will do is a funds transfer via ach from BoA to this card over 0.01 $ every 90 days until the card expires and than I close it. That cost me nothing than the 0.02 $ until the card expires and I have no hassle with them.

They have the right to change their T&C’s and they also have the right to tell us either use the card and accept the T&C’s or close the account. It is debatable if an online posting of the T&C’s is enough or if the “lost” notification is needed. Reading my old T&C’s it looks like that a change on the website is good enough.

I just put the card in the corner (to my Coboltcard, Citi Prepaid, Crystalcard and other stuff) and say, it was fun while it lasted, let’s find something else. In the time I had the card I got enough miles out of it to justify the fee.

I’m sorry for “Marathon Man”’s problems and hope he can get it resolved.

they may have the right to change the T&Cs and all that, but if they wont even tell me some of the info I need to know about who they are, etc, and I keep getting the runaround, then why should I deal with a scammer and pay them anything?

I did not get enough of anything with this card. Maybe if I had gotten at least say 2000 miles out of it I could further justify the fee, but right now I have spent $22 for 500 miles and unless I too administer o1cent for the next 2 years, I will have to spend $10 more to close it! that's wrong. the thing never worked for me like it should have when it did allow loads with a CC so where was my value added?

Can you even DO ACH anymore? I dunno. Hard to get any real answers now anyhow.

I bet if this happened to say 100 people, you'd have a pretty scammy company out there who just made $3000 from figuring out a legitimate way of ripping us off. Boy, I guess they are as good at that as we are sometimes perceived to be in the miles game by some! ;)

Anyway, thanks for your sympathy. We will see what happens.
:)MM

if you ever have to call VisaBuxx--especially Wachovia--do this:
 

do NOT type in your account number. It may charge you fees, as per the T&Cs. These are 50cents after 4 calls in a month. I got charged a few just for the first call of 2 different months.

So I called back today and just hit ##*#*#*#**#*#*#*#### a bunch and got thru to someone named Brad who took them off as a courtessy. He could not figure out why I got charged for the first call of a month! Weird. I had to call because of something that is fine now. My point to him had also been that if something I called about was not my fault, I should not have to pay. I told him there's no way to call in and not enter your acct number unless you get around the prompts somehow and he agreed this was strange as well.

All fine now, I guess.

I get miles, but boy, if there's gonna be something that can happen, it'll happen to me! Geesh.
Most of them end up working out after I go thru a few gauntlets. I guess that's my price!

You?...

I have picked my battles and ended the FNBM prepaid card thang...
 

I tried to call the 800# once more today in hopes of getting a new supervisor who could listen to my painful tale on this card.

Desere put me on hold forever but I got thru to Carol at x6636. All in all, the entire call lasted 20 mins but I was able to get some computer work done in the background.

Supervisor Carol patiently listened the entire story from when I first had problems loading the card up until yesterday when obtuse CSRs were hanging up the phone on me, etc.

In the end, she said she was extremely sorry for what I had been through and was glad to cancel me out without issue. She understood why and there is NO FEE to cancel the card early if they don't have to send you a balance due! My card is at ZERO so there is no left over pennies, etc to worry about.

Anyone who has the card should do the same thing: Pay a bill or make a purchase of the exact amount needed to make the card go to ZERO $$ and dont forget to calculate in your fee for purchases vs. bill paying. (I would not trust them with bill pay so I never had time to set it up, but others here say it worked fine for them).

Carol said that she totally sympathized with my ongoing problems and if she could find a way to refund my initial $19.95 fee she would, but I said forget it and thus have ended this sham with greater ease.

I then got this email moments later:

From: "Platinum Prepaid Card" <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:52:27 GMT
Subject: Your Card Has Been Cancelled

Dear Jeffrey,

Per your request we have cancelled your Platinum
Prepaid Card. Your card is no longer available
for use.

We valued you as a Platinum Prepaid cardholder.
If you wish to open a new card, please visit us
online at www.OpenMyCard.com or call
1-800-940-4960.

Sincerely,
The Platinum Prepaid Team

Please DO NOT respond to this email notification.
For customer service or card information, please
visit www.AccessMyCard.com or call
1-800-940-4960.

Shortly after ending my call with Carol, I got a surpirse call from Chris Ann, the mean CSR from yesterday morning! She called my office line directly in fact. She was nice this time and explained to me that I could talk to a certain supervisor and this and that. I politely cut her short explaing that I had just cancelled the service. I asked again who owend the card service now and she repeated that the name is:

FIRST FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK OF THE MIDWEST.
She would not tell anything else. So while talking with her, I went on google and got this below. You can see there are too many of them and it is not know which is which. I told her I did this and then ended the call. Here's my recent google search to find the still obscure bank that I plan to never do business with again anyway:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Now it's really over and I paid a $22 lesson that I now hope makes some of you save your money and get out while you can.

:)MM

I just called and terminated my card too, she was friendly but not even try to ask why or tried to keep me as a customer.

Sven, I am glad you got out and glad you got miles, thereby making this worthy for at least one other person. I now don't feel so bad about losing the $20 if it helped out in any way another fellow FTer...

:)MM