On June 10 my 18-year-old son took $200 in cash to the Wenatchee, Wash., Safeway store to purchase a pre-paid debit card for his graduation trip to Hawaii the next morning. After perusing the large gift card section he chose what looked like the best deal: an Only1 Visa Rechargeable Debit Card. It cost $4.95 and would accept up to $500.
As he was walking to the car, however, he realized that he had mistakenly put money on a recharge card... Not the debit card itself. He turned around and went back into the store to exchange it for an actual debit card. They told him that even though he had just handed them the cash, they could not refund the money without authorization from the parent compan (ies), which turned out to be a maze of names: Meta Bank, Blackhawk Network (a subsidiary of Safeway) and, ultimately, Galileo Processing, founded by CEO Clay Wilkes of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Thus began a three-hour nightmare. The very helpful and patient Safeway supervisor spent more than 30 minutes on the phone, calling the Only1 number clearly listed for refunds. The first time she got through, her call was disconnected. The second time, her request for help was denied, saying the only option available to my son was to purchase a debit card for $9.95, plus $20, the minimum amount you can use to activate a card, and then transfer his $200 over to that.
When I took the phone to protest, a supervisor told me that the 800 number for refunds on the back of the recharge card was an error, a typo that shouldn't have gone out because only the client services vendor could handle refunds. This same unhelpful rep initially also refused to tell me the name of the company that owned Only1, saying "you can research that online, " but then he finally blurted out that the owner was "Blackhawk." Later, another operator said the owner was a man named Clay Wilkes, in Salt Lake City, CEO for Galileo Processing.
So my son went ahead and spent another $29.95 for the actual debit card, and then went out to the car to activate it. To our astonishment, the operator told him that the only way he could put his $200 on the card was if he told her his Social Security number, birth date and other personal information. This was for identification purposes, she said, and also because of the Patriot Act. She, and a supervisor, insisted this was the only way he could get his money, so he gave the information unwillingly, only to be told that the STILL could not access his $200, because at 18, he didn't have a credit history, so they couldn't verify his information...
The customer (dis) service rep suggested that his mom purchase a debit card, for another $29.95, give out all HER personal information, and then, since she had credit history, they could transfer the $200 to her debit card... Assuming everything worked, which was a huge assumption by that part of the evening.
Now Only1 had my son's $200 AND all his personal information, which they refused to delete. The telephone rep dully assured me that the company doesn't share personal information, but we later discovered that is a total lie, at least according to the privacy disclosure information I later downloaded online.in fact, according to the Only1 online privacy disclosure notice, it appears that Only1 really makes its money by freely sharing personal information with its long list of partners and affiliates. It furthermore advises its poor victims: "You do not have the right to opt out of the disclosure of this information."
This was, by far, the worst customer service I have ever experienced. The reps appeared to be answering from a script, reading off the same inane answers. It was at this boiling point that we went back to the Safeway store, and, after listening to our story, a very human and caring Safeway manager overrode policy and refunded my son's money.
We are grateful to the Safeway employees who went out of their way to help us, but deeply troubled that Safeway is affiliated with Only1. As far as I'm concerned, this company should be banned from the shelves of any reputable retailer. It's obvious that Meta Bank/Blackhawk Networking/Galileo Processing is busy making money on its victims' personal information and stealing whatever it can in the way of obscene fees and confusing charges. I encouraged my son to get a pre-paid debit card because I thought it would keep his money safe from theft. Little did we realize that the real thieves appear to be running this debit card business.
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