Consumer complaint received 2022-08-20
Company: Albert Corporation
State: CA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Deposits and withdrawals

Complaint:
On approximately XX/XX/2022, I opened an Albert checking account under a promotion that promised a {$150.00} bonus if there were three months in a row of 1. direct deposits over {$200.00} 2. at least {$100.00} in debit card spend Qualifying direct deposits would also unlock cash back offers on the debit card. 

I repeatedly contacted Albert customer support since opening the account to ensure that I was properly meeting the bonus requirements. They clarified that the 3 30-day periods would start with the first direct deposit ( which was on XX/XX/2022 - an XXXX deposit that they confirmed on my direct deposit list and which unlocked my cash back offers that month ). 

Thus, according to them I needed one direct deposit and {$100.00} of debit card spend for each of 3 periods - XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, and XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Immediately after setting up the account, I went to their " set up direct deposit '' menu and was happy to see that XXXX  host was listed as one of the options. NOTE that this " set up direct deposit '' menu flows directly from the {$150.00} bonus offer page. I have saved screen shots from the DD enrollment process and at no time in this process did they say that XXXX host was not a " qualifying '' direct deposit. It was one of the options immediately after the {$150.00} bonus offer screen. Because enrolling " automatically '' didn't work, I followed their instructions to add the DD manually instead. 

Upon receiving that first direct deposit on XX/XX/XXXX, it did not automatically post as DD. so I wrote to customer service. and they moved the deposit to my official qualifying DD list inside the app. They clarified that this would be my first qualifying DD and the 30 day periods noted above. 

This continued for almost 2 months that they would add my DDs to the official qualifying DD list and I would make the required debit card spend. Each time I wrote in, at no time did any Albert rep say these deposits wouldn't qualify for the bonus. ONLY qualifying DDs count to unlock the debit spend offers and each time my offers were unlocked, further representing to me that I was qualifying for the bonus as well. 

Until this past week when they suddenly claimed - two months in to a three month qualifying process - that my deposits wouldn't count for bonus purposes. When I pointed out the misleading nature of their dashboard, the customer service correspondence we'd had, and that nowhere in their terms did they state this... they literally waited a week to get back to me, added language to the terms that was not there before, and now refuse to consider these deposits as qualifying even though they've been affirmatively misleading me for 2 months. 

This is fraud and bait and switch. They can not revise terms on a bonus after the fact, and they can not affirmatively mislead their customers with their dashboard or their CSR responses.

Company public response: Company believes the complaint provided an opportunity to answer consumer's questions
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation