Green Dot review: Green dot prepaid visa card

I've been using green dot prepaid Visa debit card to pay my bills for over the last 5 years. So yesterday, Tuesday September 5th at 12:56 pm I went to a family dollar store #11808 @ 101 S. Reilly rd Fayetteville nc to load money onto my prepaid card to pay my rent per my monthly routine. There is a maximum limit of $500 per transaction and a transaction fee of $3.95 per transaction. Since my rent is $1200 plus a online portal fee of something like 36 dollars, I made 3 transactions to total $1300, the first transaction was for $500, the second transaction was also $500 and the third was for $300. I gave the clerk $505, $505 again and then $305, each time the clerk gave me my $1 and 5 cents change along with a receipt. I then left the store, grabbed lunch on my way to work, after my lunch I paid my rent through an app as per my routine. Now I had ruined my phone the day before by getting it wet so I had to download the greendot app along with my rent app with my iPad for work. When I signed into the green dot app I was informed that my account had been closed and I could do nothing else with the app. There was a message that said I can look at my latest transactions by going to their website directly in which I did. There I saw that I had made 3 adding funds transactions in the amount of 500 each, 3x500 equals 1500 which is a mistake, I also saw that I made the rent payment but there was another transaction that said something about a refund in the amount of $299 and some change I don't remember exactly offhand. I went into my pockets for the receipts and all three were for $500. This is when I realized the store clerk had made a mistake and over credited my account, at this point I had the idea that when the store realized their mistake and that possibly the clerk maybe said i only gave them 1200 dollars and that would explain the negative $299 transaction. I asked to step out of work to go to the family dollar store to see if I could straighten this out, when I walked in they knew who I was and informed me that they knew why I was there and even that they were surprised that I came back. They said the clerks drawer was $200 short and they were trying to figure out why, and when they did they pulled the camera footage to see who I was, that's why they knew why I was there. It was a simple mistake on the stores part and we people make mistakes, I have a meeting with the general manager of the store tomorrow morning. In the meantime I spent hours last night and nearly an hour today trying to connect with green dot customer service. After waiting a very long time on hold I was finally able to reach a person, the first person seemed hopeful as they saw the mistake and said that it wouldn't be a problem to restore my account, but they had to connect me with a "specialist" which I again waiting a pretty long time again, this person kept putting me on hold again repeatedly only to come back to tell me that they couldn't do anything for me and perhaps family dollar could. I asked for what reason they closed my account to which they replied they could not tell me, I asked if I could have the remainder of the money that is rightfully mine to which they again could not answer me and again referred me to take it up with family dollar. I asked if the store made the mistake which the store admitted making to me, then why am I the one being punished for the mistakes of others. Again nothing.

This was not the only time I had an issue with green dot customer service. Nearly a year ago I attempted to purchase health insurance online, I have a friend who's in the medical field and asked me what the insurance was, when I told her, she never heard of it before and quickly did a Google search to find that it was a company that had a reputation for scamming people. When you read the reviews they all pretty much said the same thing, that the insurance did not cover any of their medical bills at all and that they repeatedly tried to cancel the insurance with the company but yet they kept charging their cards monthly, that ultimately the customers had to cancel their cards and aquire a new card and number to make the fraudulent charges stop. They (the not so honest insurance co.) did the same to me and when I called green dot customer service, after waiting forever to talk to someone all they could tell me was to contact the insurance company to have them fix it. I told them I just want you to block them from charging me again, I don't want their service (or lack of) so don't let them take my money. Again they insisted on me getting the scam company to stop scamming me. Laughable, I read a few reviews to him and I said see, they don't care about me asking them to stop charging me and they are at long as YOU (greendot) keep allowing them to take my funds. More proof, greendot has a handy vault feature where I can stash funds so no one can take them, to which I did to protect myself from the scam insurance company. Now they haven't received a payment from me in over 10 months. One would think that any real legit and reputable company would cancel my insurance since I don't pay them. Last month I mistakenly put money on my card for a date I had in case we went to a place that didn't take cash, I didn't put this money into the vault and the wholesome insurance company got me for $100 and something dollars. It seems like greendot likes and sides with the thieves over their own customers. Maybe they have more in common then they have with me, since they now too, steal from me.

View 0 more photos