I want the $699 that was directly deposited on to an account now prepaid visa card in december (which was my disability benefit payment from ssa for the month of december) i have never heard of the account now prepaid visa card or the bancorp bank who issues the account now card. Not only have i never heard of the bank or prepaid card in question, i've never applied for anything from them, never requested anything from them, never received anything from them and don't have any intentions on doing any kind of business with them.
I've been on disability through social security since august. I have been receiving my monthly disability benefit payment directly deposited on the 3rd of every month into my government issued direct express debit mastercard successfully with no problems. For some reason when i called to check my balance with direct express on 12/2, i discovered that my monthly benefit payment did not direct deposit as scheduled like normal. I immediately contacted the ssa to find out why. I was informed that ssa was going to put a tracer on the payment to see what had happened.
I received contact from ssa stating that for some strange reason, my benefit payment for december had been directly deposited on to a prepaid card issued through the bancorp bank which also came with a phone number and address for the financial institution in question. When social security informed me about the incident, they researched their computer system and saw that their records for my monthly direct deposit reflected the same financial institution of direct express that i had set up all the months prior as well as for any ongoing future payments.
Ssa had no record of my monthly disability benefit payments set up at any time for deposit with account now. When ssa questioned me for any information as to why and what i may think took place resulting in the error, the only information i could provide them was that on october 10th, my home computer which held all of mine and members of my family's personal information in it's hard drive causing my personal information to be compromised. I provided them with a copy of my police report for the stolen computer, my identity theft affidavit, ftc complaint case information as well as any other documents i had in regards to the identity theft that just so happened to have taken place not too long before the december benefit payment somehow deposited on to a prepaid card that i've never owned.
On 12/21, i contacted the customer service dept for account now and spoke to a rep named kevin (877) 984-7465. I explained the incident to him and he informed me to just simply fax a copy of my id, ss card, proof of current residence and any other related documents to account now's fraud risk management dept at (925) 217-0052 and after doing so, to follow up with a phone call within 3 business days to verify they received the faxed documents which at that point, account now would resolve the issue.
On 12/28, i contacted sherline with account now's risk management dept to verify the faxes i had sent were received, sherline told me that she checked the notes regarding my issue and that joey with their customer service dept noted that my faxes were received, however, in an effort to expedite the matter, she asked if i could complete an accountnow/ready financial risk dept error claim form along with the documents i had already faxed prior, and this time she asked if i could fax them to (925) 218-4407 or email the requested documents to [email protected], i agreed to do both.
On 12/30 & 1/5, i tried making contact via email with account now at their email address of [email protected], my attempts were not successful because nobody responsed. On 1/5, i was able to reach joey with account now's customer service dept. He informed me that all i needed to do was have social security contact them so they could verify with social security that my benefit payment for the month of december had been directly deposited on to an account now card in error, which account now would then reimburse me for the $699 payment.
I immediately contacted social security and informed them what i had been told by joey with account now, but upon doing that, social security informed me that they do not call anybody regarding issues such as this and to call joey with account now back to inform him that social security needed somebody from account now to contact their treasury dept and explain that the issue was an error as i was not an account now customer and to go ahead and replace the payment in question. I immediately contacted account now's customer service dept to inform joey of that which i followed up with by sending another email to [email protected]. I never heard anything back from either kevin or joey with accountnow's customer service dept or sherline with their financial risk management dept, therefore i filed complaint with the bbb on 1/18.
Almost a month later with no response from account now to the bbb complaint, they finally responded to the bbb on 2/15 stating that they spoke to me and advised me that i would need to contact social security and determine why they redirected my social security deposit and that they had no additional details at that time. I was very frustrated as their response to the bbb was completey false. Nobody from account now contacted me or said any such thing. Therefore on 2/17, i stated just that in my rebuttal to the bbb. Since i discovered that account now had chosen to provide the bbb with false untrue information, i decided to file complaint with the fdic on 2/21.
On 3/5, i received a certified letter from the bancorp bank on behalf of account now, dated 2/25, only 4days after filing complaint with the fdic. The letter isn't signed by anybody from the bancorp bank unlike the version of the letter was that they had sent to the fdic on 3/7, from the bancorp bank's senior vice president, paul landry. The certified copy of the letter i received the month prior said sincerely the bancorp bank payment solutions group. The letter was filled with numerous untrue statements named by the bank that issues the account now prepaid card. The last thing i heard from bancorp bank or account now, was what they reported to the bbb on 4/26. They stated that the money has been exhausted, i claim that someone redirected my payment to them and they have no control over that, and they go on to say the funds were spent.
What i would like to point out is that account now is claiming an account was opened using my information on 9/16. However, i received notification from account now on 10/27, that "although they sent out a card to me a few weeks ago, their records show i hadn't used it yet" and again on 6/9, i received notification once again from account now stating that "although they sent me out a new card a few weeks ago, their records show i hadn't used it yet" yet in a response letter to susan welsh with the fdic dated 3/7,
The bancorp bank states they received a call on 12/4 regarding the account and took a lost stolen report. Mailed out a new card. On 12/13, they received a call from mr. Martin stating he never applied for the card, therefore the card was closed permanently as fraud. That's what they should have done when i called on 12/4 to report the incident and inform them that i never requested, applied or received any type of prepaid card. Upon receiving that call from me, the account should have been closed and reported as fraud. A lost or stolen report taken followed by sending out another card is not the action account now should have taken.
On 10/22, i received yet another account now card in the mail that i did not request. I reported the contact issuance of this card to the ftc. As of 11/1, i have still not received restitution or reimbursement for my social security disability benefit payment of $699.
It's interesting to me that when i filed complaint with the business, they led me to believe they were going to handle it and reimburse me the $699, but never followed through on their word and ignored me all together. Then when i filed a complaint with the bbb, they did nothing, but did however at least respond every 2 months with 1 single untrue sentence. But when i filed complaint with the fdic, suddenly the senior vice president for the bancorp bank (paul landry), the bank that actually issues the account now prepaid cards, responded with letters providing defensive statements.
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