Consumer complaint received 2015-06-29
Company: Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc.
State: AZ
Product: Prepaid card
Sub-product: General purpose card
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On XXXX/XXXX/15 I loaded {$50.00} ( cash ) on to a Reloadit pack. ( This is one of the companies that offers reloads for XXXX Prepaid Mastercards, which is the card I have,. They, Reloadit, are backed by Blackhawk Network California ) I then followed the directions on the pack to open a Reloadit Safe on their website. After I completed the information the website requested, I received a popup message that said I would receive an email of how to complete the activation of my Reloadit Safe. I kept checking my email account ... no email from Reloadit. XXXX hours + later I called them, this would be XXXX/XXXX/15. I was told that they were having software problems and their system would not send out the email notices. Then I was told I would just have to wait until the situation was corrected. When I asked how long that would take the person on the phone did not have an answer. I asked about a refund, I was told it could take up to XXXX days. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait another day. Actually I waited an additional XXXX days, until today XXXX/XXXX/15. When I called today I got the same runaround. I then requested a refund. Again I was told it would take up to XXXX days. I said I would rather wait for a refund than wait for them to " fix '' their system. At that point I was told to send them an email with a copy of the front and back of the Reloadit Pack, a copy of my receipt, a copy of the Activation Status Receipt and a copy of my Identification. The agent I was talking to then told me that " IF '' everything checked out they would see about a refund. I was told that once I requested a refund they would cancel the Reloadit pack and it could not be used to load the balance on to any other account ( XXXX, XXXX, PayPower etc. ) At this point I got very worried. What if they declined to do the refund ( which it sounds like they do fairly regularlyI Would I just be out the money? I decided to do a bit of research before doing that. 

What I found was not pretty. I did a XXXX search for this particular company ( there are a couple of different Reloadit companies ). What I found was disturbing..numerous people have posted problems with this company. Some of the people who requested refunds were declined because Reloadit said the pack had already been posted to someone elses account, but according to the customer, the only people who had all the info needed to do that was the person who bought the pack AND the people at Reloadit that requested all the info on the pack. I believe there is a major problem with this company. I feel any and all sales of this companies Reloadit packs should be halted until this is investigated. I have notified XXXX Prepaid of this issue and they have taken my comlpaint and escalated it to Urgent status. There are enough complaints out there that I believe all of these Reloadit packs from Blackhawk Network California should be removed from sale. Some of the existing complaints mention that their website was hacked and a fake website set up to scam information and money. Anyone who buys one of these cards is probably going to lose their money. This has been going on for months..why these Reloadit packs are still available to purchase is beyond me. They should all have been removed from the marketplace. 
I believe this is a complete scam and fraud situation at this point.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief