Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA)
“Meta Payment Systems is a division of MetaBank, a federally chartered savings bank. We are a principal member of the MasterCard®, Visa® and Discover® networks, as well as all regional debit networks. Together, we’re changing the way people use money.”
That sounds great but in practices it really isn’t like that.
Here are the ways Meta Bank programs create major headaches for their customers:
http://nbpca.com/docs/Washington-Post-Prepaid-Article-2009-10-25.pdf
This reads like an advertisement for prepaid cards. I only encountered problems with the card; it is nothing to promote to anyone else. On a Cruise in Europe last October 2009, I met another traveler who was also unable to get the Meta Bank AAA travel card to work either. In this article they say they have targeted immigrants and college students. This is a shame since they cannot build up a credit history by using this card. The immigrants also may not know where to go to complain and in another language. I didnʼt know where to go, and I kept getting double talk. Meta Bank representatives kept pushing the blame back on me as the customer, but it was their fault.
Please read on for ways that you can help to correct this situation.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA-GPR-Disclosures-Press-Release.pdf
I canʼt get their internal links to open
http://nbpca.com/docs/091116-Statement-on-Fed-Reserve-Proposed-Rules.pdf
Meta Bank posts this link in a very obvious place on their website. In the meantime, I received such shabby treatment from them while using their prepaid card. I would have been far better off using a local bank.
http://nbpca.com/docs/College-Students-Release.pdf
I was not able to reach Meta Bank by the online access information for my account.
Their 1-800 number does not work from Europe. I still think that college students would be better off dealing with their local banks and by getting to know their local bankers. Open up an old fashioned savings account. Learn to live within your means. Be forewarned. Do not use Meta Bank if you want respectable customer service or even what most people would consider ordinary customer service.
Please read on for ways that you can help to correct this situation.
http://www.iirusa.com/prepaid/welcome-page.xml
This will be held in Las Vegas in February to promote the use of prepaid debit cards to “the underserved.” Please read on for ways to protect the underserved from banks like Meta Bank!
http://www.iirusa.com/prepaid/agenda-page.xml
This is the agenda for what they will discuss in Las Vegas. I hope that the government’s regulatory officers will be able to attend and to listen so that you will be able to be ready for what these people might have in mind. Since I had such a horrible experience with Meta Bank and I am such “small potatoes” to them what about all of the immigrants and the college students to whom they plan to promote this prepaid reloadable card? It just did not work and they gave me the runaround and double talk, no real service.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA-March-2009-Consumer-Chats.pdf
This link only brings you to biased publicity for the prepaid debit card. Where is the public’s discussion about their experiences with this kind of card for prospective new card users to be able to see what the track record is for this bank and this card?
An employer should simply pay their employees. The employees should be able to then bank wherever they choose. A reloadable bank card is not an acceptable way for a company to pay their customers. The customers should be made aware of all the pitfalls of the prepaid debit card so that they can withdraw all of their money and get the interest from it for themselves. If someone really needs a job they may agree to this, but an employee should be paid in cash out right.
http://nbpca.com/docs/Unemployment-Benefits-Cards-Tips-Release.pdf
This statement says that the prepaid bank card can be replaced if lost but that a lost check cannot be replaced. I believe that is incorrect and misleading information only to get people to ask for the prepaid debit card. Instead of cashing the check and putting the money in a savings account, the money would sit in the stateʼs bank account. This would benefit the state, but not the person who is on unemployment. They encourage the customers to spend more with this card while they are unemployed. This is awful.
http://nbpca.com/docs/090309_AbandonedPropertyWhitePaperRelease.pdf
This document says that the laws have not kept up with the prepaid bank cards so that it is difficult to assess as to whether property is truly abandoned or not. This is an area to be studied further. I suspect that these banks are up to something no good here.
What is it? I think that it means if you have not used your card in a while that they will take your money or ask that the state take it. If this is true then this should be posted in writing and also told in words in a language that the customer speaks and understands, their native language, when they open such an account that the account will become dormant under what circumstances and when, and what they will need to do to prevent this. The bank should also state what steps they will take to notify the customer, some of them should be in writing and by US Mail.
http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/nbpca/35701/
Branded gift cards were highlighted for the economic downturn just before Christmas
2008
You see them every where now. Yes, now that the economy has taken a downturn, and these Branded gift cards are not as nice as you are lead to believe they are everywhere when we should really be seeing them less. Do not be tempted by them. Spend your money locally or save it. Learn to live more frugally.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBGC-Recipients-Behaviors-Rpt.pdf
“I am waiting to use the card later” figure 6 – This means that the banks get free use of the money while it is sitting there. If cash was given then the money would be more likely to be spent and enjoyed or put into the customerʼs own bank account. Figure 8 -appreciate that they have received the gift because of the relationship with the giver.
Figure 12 – The gift cards are preferred over traditional gifts. The stigma that the gift cards are a “cop-out or a last resort is refuted by recipients” according to this report. ( How did that happen?)
34.3% of the 7.8% who had problems with the gift card were not able to resolve their problem with the gift card. That is really bad!
Anticipated growth in the use of gift cards is anticipated at 137% for National Brands.
The card is now used by families. 90% of NBGCs are used within the first 1-2 months of receipt. This is well before any maintenance fees kick in.
Does the card say that a maintenance fee will be charged after that time????? I ask because I got one and did not see that on it and I have not used it yet since it was given jointly to me and my spouse so I could not just pick it up and go out to use it any time I chose to use it, It needs to be coordinated, I thought and perhaps that is what Meta Bank’s researchers found too.
http://nbpca.com/docs/RedeemingCardsTips.pdf
“• Use your card, donʼt save it. When you use your card promptly, you avoid monthly fees and issues relating to the cardʼs expiration date. So, check your cardʼs terms and conditions for details and go shopping!” WHY ISN’T THIS PART DISPLAYED PROMINENTLY WHEN YOU BUY THE CARD? THIS MAKES GIVING AND RECEIVING THE PREPAID GIFT CARD FAR TOO COMPLICATED. I THINK THAT MOST PEOPLE IF THEY UNDERSTOOD THIS WOULD RATHER JUST RECEIVE CASH, REAL CASH MONEY AS A GIFT. This isn’t a gift. This is a headache!!!
“• Know your balance. Check how much money you have on the card before going shopping” (most cards offer telephone and online services to do this) and if you’re making a purchase that is larger than the amount available on your card, be sure to tell the cashier in advance.” WOULDN’T A GIFT OF CASH, REAL CASH MONEY BE FAR SIMPLER FOR THE RECIPIENT? A prepaid gift card may just end up being one big headache for the recipient. They are not such a good idea unless you are dealing with a business directly where you are well known and it is a privately owned or family owned business, and not a major chain that uses the prepaid gift cards.
These are too complicated. When a problem arises, you will still be left dealing with Meta Bank and there are no guidelines and no internal codes to safeguard you as their customer.
Furthermore, this information should be right on the card. I got a card some time ago as a gift, but I didnʼt know any of this information!!! I would not normally be searching on line for this information. Most people wouldn’t even think to search for this kind of information on line. Why would they? They would just show up at the store or at the restaurant ready to shop. Please give cash in stead in the future.
http://nbpca.com/docs/AA-Cons-Rpt-Viewpoint.pdf
Oh No, it is banks like Meta Bank that are out of step with reality! I wrote to Consumer Reports to complain to them about the treatment that I got at Meta Bank. What happened to me should never happen to another person. I did not know how to prevent that from happening to another person since my complaints to Meta Bank had fallen on deaf ears. Consumer Reports is responding to input from readers and from the general public. We should listen!
When Consumer Reports writes something, it is because people have complained.
Doesn’t that send up a big red flag for you as a customer when Meta Bank and their cohorts don’t like what Consumer Reports is saying about banking practices? Why yes, Consumer Reports is actually talking about what Meta Bank is doing wrong to the general public. As consumers we need to know this, but shouldn’t Meta Bank be trying to find some kind of banking solution that works for both the bank and the consumer?
I think that Meta Bank thinks there has to be a winner takes all mentality when that will not work in a truly sustainable climate, and that is what Americans want in a global society.
Americans are growing tired of this kind of thinking. We want to find solutions where everybody comes away feeling good. This can happen on all levels of our society as a basic human right. This is how we want our future to look for all Americans. We want to reject the kind of hierarchical thought process that is creating a banking pyramid scheme that has been pushed onto Americans by banks like Meta Bank. We must stand up for what is right and good about America, the American people.
We want to be informed. We don’t like feeling taken advantage of. We expect others to feel this way as well. We want to make decisions based on clear and correct information. We will no longer accept the way that Meta Bank has treated us as a people. It is our time to speak up for ourselves. As a group, united together as Americans, we must collectively speak out against this kind of mistreatment by banks like Meta Bank in order to get this stopped at this time and to protect ourselves and our children and our neighbors from this kind of practice in the future.
All of us must write in to the proper places asking for the necessary changes.
Please read on for the correct addresses.
http://nbpca.com/docs/2007GiftCardSurveyRelease.pdf
One person wrote to me saying that she was satisfied with the prepaid travel card until she went to reload it and then it wasnʼt reloaded by Meta Bank so she flew to a foreign country where very few people spoke English thinking that she would have access to her own money for one month of independent travel. She had no access to any of her own $5,000.00 in cash. She was living more like a homeless person in land far from home in a country where very few people spoke English.
“Would you have wanted to experience that when you knew that you had set aside enough money, cash money, so that you could have lived well during your vacation?” She asked me. “Would you want anyone else to experience this same thing?” she asked me.
Meta Bankʼs response to her as a customer has not been satisfactory she added.
Meta Bank held on to all of her cash money for the entire time that she was in this other place far from home and she could not access her own money she had put on her Meta Bank travel card just the week before thinking it would make her safer, she told me.
She said that the hardest part was that she knew that she had that money, cash money, not even in a check, in her hands only days before she had left home.If she had only kept it and not tried to make herself “safer” as Meta Bank had promoted this travel card, she actually would have been safer
“I didn’t even have money to phone home”, she told me.
Meta Bank criticized her for not making daily phone calls to them in an effort to get them to restore her own money to the prepaid card. (They also told her that it wouldn’t have done much good had I actually phoned.) She found both of those comments so strange and bizarre by way of a response to what had just happened to her. She was in disbelief that anyone could have been so heartless. She asked me, “What is our world coming to?” I did not know how to answer. What can you say?
She told me that she had been told the travel card was already reloaded in an email and before she had left home. Then she asked me why should she think to question this. I have no good answer for that. When we go to businesses, we are all programmed to expect them to do the job they have been retained or hired to do. We do not expect the business to keep renegotiating the contract once the job has begun. If we hired someone to paint our house for us and each day they came to work, they had to renegotiate the contract, then it would be impossible to do business with them, and we simply would not do business with that person again. We would also tell everyone about our experience with them.
A bank official, the kind who sits in the office with the door, in that country, told this woman that the card Meta Bank gave her to use was improperly formatted so that none of their machines would be able to read the kind of a travel card that Meta Bank had issued to her in December 2008 by June 2009.
Why Meta Bank had sold her a useless travel card that was improperly formatted for a country that many Americans may easily decide to visit would be something she would have to get straightened out upon her return to the United States. Her immediate concerns had turned to how she would survive in a foreign country with no money, no way to access her own money and no work permit. She had a bigger dilemma to face at that very moment than having to figure out how to use some two bit American Bank’s outdated backwoods travel card. It didn’t work where she was at that time, and that was all she knew for then. She needed to survive.
Later she would learn that in addition to that problem, Meta Bank had not actually ever reloaded her travel card on at least the two separate occasions when she had approached Meta Bank and given Meta Bank the correct information, her cash money and she had asked them to reload it for her. Meta Bank upon her second request chose to load another card and to exclude her card. It was a choice that Meta Bank made while fully aware of her circumstances and that they were holding all of her cash and leaving her without access to her own money. She asked me to tell others about how Meta Bank had treated her so that they would never again be able to treat another person the same way.
She said that instead of addressing her situation, Meta Bank wrote her back to say they could not give her a “credit advance.” She had never asked for a credit advance. Meta Bank, she believes is well practiced in double talk, but not in anything else.
“Something is very wrong at Meta Bank,” she added, and asked me to warn people not to ever use Meta Bank for anything.
The general public needs to be protected from this kind of banking “service.” The way that Meta Bank treated her is not a standard to which she would hold up for other banks to follow in the United States or elsewhere in the world. This should not become a prototype or an example for other banks to follow. This should not become the norm she implored me to request on her behalf.
Would those people at Meta Bank have treated her that way if they had lived side by side? I don’t know, but that money would have stayed in her own city when she didn’t have access to it for a full month. Perhaps her own community would have then been better off at least with the interest from it, but that didn’t happen either since Meta Bank’s headquarters are far from her hometown.
Please act now to prevent this from every happening to another person again.
http://nbpca.com/docs/BackToSchool.pdf
Encourage your college student to use a local bank. Build up your local economy. Do not use Meta Bank prepaid cards. Why just hand over your hard earned money to Meta Bank, an out of state bank that you really know nothing about? You may never see it again for a very long time while Meta Bank enjoys use of your money as if they got a free loan.
Please act now to protect our youth from this kind of banking practices at Meta Bank.
The use of any form of a Meta Bank Prepaid Card or Prepaid Debit Card that Meta Bank puts out, no matter what name they call it will only bring you and your family great pain.
Do not even consider using a Meta Bank or their PrePaid and ReLoadable Card no matter what they may choose to call it on any given day.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA_Reloadable_Release.pdf
Interest in card acquisition is high, particularly among cash-based consumers who experience a particular set of pain points when it comes to making payments and managing finances. Comprehensive survey results are available through an NBPCA authored white paper entitled “Consumer Attitudes Towards Payroll and General Purpose Reloadable Cards.” What does this really mean?
Third party companies are being approached by Meta Bank to get them to promote their prepaid card.
- Often times Meta Bank will ask this company to use one form of the prepaid card with their employees.
- That company may use the prepaid card as an incentive program, a gift program, a bonus program or even as a way of paying the customers.
- The company earns interest on any money on the face value of the card and can even control how much money can be removed from the card in any given time period of their own choosing, by saying they are trying “to protect” their employees spending habits.
- Then they ask their employees to push the Meta Bank prepaid debit card to their paying customers of the business.
- Those customers actually get a different 1-800 contact number on the back of their prepaid reloadable card; they are treated in a different way because they will be the “dog” level or the “worker” level to be the ones who are supposed to bring in the money for the company.
- This is how Meta Bank earns their money since they get a cut and so does the management.
- The employees think they are getting a cut, but it is really nothing since management actually gets interest and use of the gift or pay that they are supposed to have given them on the prepaid cards they gave to their employees.
- The employees think that they have the same card as the customer so they can and do promote the card.
- It could be that they will even get added bonuses added to their prepaid and reloadable cards if they can keep getting more and more people to opt into buying the prepaid and reloadable Meta Bank cards.
- Although the customers may complain, since they can get their cards to work as the employee and any negative feedback may look bad on their record, they then tell the customer that the customer has not used the prepaid card properly or that the customer has made some kind of a mistake.
- The whole interior climate at Meta Bank and then the one in the companies that decide to use the prepaid reloadable cards becomes skewed.
- Meta Bank representative’s responses challenge a normal persons sense of reason, but the employees at Meta Bank are so enmeshed in this sick system that they cannot or will not see the pathetic hole they have dug themselves into.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA_Year_One_Accomplishments.pdf
Year one summary report – These cards are new then, but they really arenʼt a good idea although the public is buying them up; they have so many pitfalls that we just donʼt know about since they are being promoted by unscrupulous banks like Meta Bank.
Perhaps if other banks were promoting them it might work by way of competition, and things would get better, but this hasn’t happened.
Now I have observed that Meta Bank has actually created a third party site where it appears that someone else is promoting Meta Bank’s services, but it is really Meta Bank promoting their own services.
We need the rules fully explained to us ahead of time. Meta Bank changes their rules during your use use of their service time without notifying you, the customers.
Have you ever played any kind of a game with someone who kept changing the rules as you played the game and thought that you could win at that game? You know that you would be kidding yourself to think that. This would have been one of the first things that you learned as a child at play so you would refuse to play as long as the playing was like that.
Kids are quick to learn things like that. It is just logical. Well Meta Bank is changing the rules as they go along ( they call this fast paced) so they can get the upper hand; as a consumer who is trying to protect their hard earned assets in an honest way, this does not sit well and it is definitely not fair. As a consumer we want out of this kind of “game play.”
This is what the American Public needs to say to banks that operate like Meta Bank. “Enough! Stop!”
(Also refuse to do any new business with Meta Bank. Boycott Meta Bank.)
How do we do this effectively?
We must collectively demand that laws are put into place to stop banks like Meta Bank from doing what they have been doing. If you do not complain to the proper people no change will happen and Meta Bank will continue on just as they always have.
America will not be the Land of Opportunity for anyone unless we all speak up for what is right, and if we do that now. Bank reforms are needed. The public needs to be protected from predatory banking practices such as we have seen at Meta Bank.
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA_Prepaid_Misconceptions.pdf
I question everything that they are trying to dispell in this pdf
http://nbpca.com/docs/NBPCA_Prepaid_FAQ.pdf
This is nothing but a marketing tool. The Meta Bank prepaid card just doesnʼt work right! Meta Bank wants the rules removed from the cards from what I have read. The public needs to see the rules and the rules cannot keep changing without notice. It is better if they are printed out and that Meta Bank is held accountable to the rules. Meta Bank changes the rules or makes them up as they go along.
Please stop Meta Bank from mistreating the general public.
Report any problems that you may have had with Meta Bankʼs Customer Service first to them directly, but if your problems are not satisfactorily resolved at that point, then write a letter of complaint to the Better Business Bureau, followed by a
letter of complaint to Your own State Attorney Generalʼs Office
and then a letter of complaint to
Office of Thrift Supervision, Department of the Treasury, Consumer Affairs Division, 1700 G Street, NW; Washington, DC 20552
Contact your US Senator and your US Legislator, ask them to stop Meta Bank from hurting other honest hardworking Americans. Explain to them exactly what happened to you, and ask that this never happens again to another person.
Why banks are encouraging you to use debit cards is because they make a lot more money from you that way:
The dark secrets of debit
Why do banks push debit cards for every purchase you make? Because they stand to make millions—largely at your expense
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/credit-loan/debit-cards/the-dark-secrets-of-debit-9-07/overview/the-dark-secrets-of-debit-ov.htm
You may have been mistreated by Meta Bank, but if some one, anyone had simply spoken up earlier about their experiences to the right people, perhaps you would have been protected from having to experience what you did.
Please do what is right for your neighbors so that they will feel inclined to do the same in the future for you. Let the proper authorities in positions where they can make the necessary changes to help the general public from banks that operate like Meta Bank. They can only do this if they have the correct and complete input from all of us working together to give them the full picture of what is actually going on.
Yes, Meta Bank may have worked very hard to try to convince you that you made a mistake, but you didnʼt and you know it in your heart so speak up for what is right and what is good. Don’t waste any time to do what is right and honorable. Now! Please
Hampers
/ January 15, 2010Your blog looks wonderful. It was nice going through your blog. Keep it up the good work. Cheers