@Netspend: Good Card, Bad Customer Service

Netspend is a pretty damn good traditional banking alternative, I’ve had it for going on two years now as I grew weary of dealing with big banks and their stupid rules.  After my small banks Washington Mutual and Wachovia got gobbled up and bought out by them, I was forced into the “empire” of JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.  They wanted to charge me monthly fees for having an account and I was further turned off with the thought of giving to the beasts. So I switched to Netspend which is linked to a small bank called MetaBank.  I opened three Netspend accounts, one for personal expenses, one for bills and one for my business.

Today I woke up and found two declined fees on my billing account so I immediately called customer service as there should not have been anything charging to it last week.  Everytime I have ever had to call Netspend, the reps always are foreign as they have accents; I have yet to speak to anyone who has spoken clear English so my guess is they just don’t exist maybe. Normally this would be besides the point, I’m not against foreigners, but I think in this case it became a problem because she didn’t appear to understand what I was asking and that’s the last kind of frustration you need when you are dealing with your money.  But I asked the rep why did I get charged two declined fees?  She puts me on hold for about 3 minutes and comes back on the line and tells me the $1 decline fee is from a declined transaction when there are not enough funds in the account.  I replied, ma’am I understand that, I know the penalty of a declined transaction, but what declined transaction did it come from because nothing should have been debiting from my account? She puts me on hold again for like maybe 5 minutes.  She comes back on the line and again parrots the same thing she just told me about the $1 transaction fee being from a declined transaction. Now I’m getting infuriated. And I’m getting infuriated because I am not asking her to explain the physics of wormholes and time travel, I am asking her rudimentary information that she, supposedly being a “trained” professional in her job in a financial institution, should know without batting an eye and yet I have spent damn near 25 minutes just trying to get an answer to the question. So I replied to her, okay maybe I’m not asking the right question, what merchant did these two decline fees come from? She puts me on hold again and comes back on the line and says, you guessed it, the same thing.  I was thinking to myself, like really lady?  I politely shut my ears off and let her finish reading off her screen, then I simply said “May I speak to a supervisor please”?  And then there I remained on hold for a supervisor for not 5 minutes, not 30 minutes, not even 45 minutes but AN HOUR, so I eventually hung up.  You’re probably asking yourself, how on earth did you have the patience to stay on the phone for an hour waiting for a supervisor? Well It was in this one hour of being on hold for a supervisor that I wrote this; that’s how I kept my sanity.

I called back and this time I got a guy, again with a slight accent, which was barely noticeable but he seemed to be competent.  I didn’t bring up the last call because I really didn’t even care, I just wanted the answer to my question.  He put me on hold for less than 2 minutes then came back on the line and said his information doesn’t show who the merchant is, how much it was for or anything, but he said he would credit the fees back to my account.