Consumer complaint received 2023-11-03
Company: Incomm Holdings Inc.
State: AZ
Product: Prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose prepaid card
Issue: Trouble using the card
Sub-issue: Trouble using the card to spend money in a store or online

Complaint:
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX 

This time, I was sent an email at the end of XXXX telling me they were sending an electronic {$50.00} Vanilla Visa ( Incomm Financial ) but the card never showed up. 

I emailed the research assistant on XX/XX/2023 and let her know I never received a gift card. She emailed me back and told me that around XX/XX/2023 they were having issues with the Vanilla Visa website. She said the website was sending multiple cards to 1 email address and none to the email addresses she had been trying to send them to. 

She then sent me a {$50.00} electronic Vanilla Visa on XX/XX/XXXX. When I opened it and tried to activate it, I discovered it was already active, and the card had been drained down to about a {$9.00} balance. I contacted the research assistant again, explained what had happened and sent her a screenshot of the drained Vanilla Visa card. She sent me a replacement on XX/XX/XXXX. 

The same thing occurred with the replacement card. The balance was drained to about {$9.00}. I started comparing both cards and XXXX InComm Financial, Vanilla Visa, etc. I suspect the day the research assistant was having problems on the vanilla visa website and all the cards were going to one email address, the site may have been spoofed or hacked. All of the charges on both of the Vanilla Visas I had been sent, were dated between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX even though the cards had not been sent to me until XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. 

InComm makes it difficult to get your money back after one of these scams. 
I was on the phone for over an hour trying to deal with the XXXX {$50.00} cards I was given from the study. The first customer service representative hung up on me while taking my fraud report. I had to verbally provide information for the representative to start a separate dispute ticket for each card. 

This was entered into a dispute ticket form and then emailed to me for review. Both tickets had errors, so I could not electronically sign those tickets. I had to send an email notifying them of the errors and wait for the errors to be fixed before I could sign the tickets, which would then open a dispute case for each Vanilla Visa. I am still waiting for the corrections to be made and as a result, no fraud tickets have been opened. 

I have seen this exact same behavior re InComm customer service and the fraud tickets, reported by other Vanilla Visa victims on complaint sites. So, InComm seems to use the same tactics to avoid accountability. I was told that it could take up to several months for them to complete their investigation. I spent hours reading about Vanilla Visa and those cards have multiple lawsuits pending against them. It seems to be well known that those cards are hacked and drained often, and it takes forever to try and recover the money if your card was drained. 

Honestly, what kind of company allows these despicable issues to drag out for months without addressing them ASAP.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation