Consumer complaint received 2024-05-23
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Banking errors
Company: Chime Financial Inc (CA)

On XX/XX/XXXX, I got paid direct deposit in my Chime account. I have had it on direct deposit since I started my current job, over a year and a half ago and typically it splits my check up in percentages between a credit builder card, my checking account, and my savings account. 

These amounts vary a fair amount as I am a XXXX XXXX who works a lot of wildly different amounts of overtime in a week. Some weeks I work barely XXXX hours, other weeks I can work close to XXXX. 
I saw my credit builder card had a high balance. I actually do have a screen shot of it from a different time that day that says a DIFFERENT amount than I even remember, because I was showing my partner that I got paid. 
I was under the impression at that time that the credit builder card had about XXXX dollars. I didn't check the pay stubs and didn't even really think about it as I was expecting a larger check and I can get a large range of amounts transferred to my credit builder card, ( again automatically ) ( ( I have a screen shot of it being at XXXX dollars at XXXX point in this process, fortuitously even though I didn't realize that it had changed or I would of flagged it then ) ) I should explain at this time for any unfamiliar with the function of a credit builder card : It builds your ( bad ) credit not by offering you a credit line but by you transferring DEPOSITED funds to it, which you then can not move back to your checking account. Chime holds onto it and pays your bill as a normal credit card would do, at the end of the month. But that's where the similarity starts and end. 
There is a spotme i have set for about XXXX bucks, but nothing that would explain why I would just have an incorrect balance on this card. 

In any case, over the next XXXX weeks I slowly bought things Ive been waiting on this check for. All were approved transactions, all showed the correct math when I looked of money leaving my account and a new total, there was nothing to indicate anything was wrong. 
On XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX days before I get paid again, I decide to make my last purchase and move some money around from my checking. When I transfer funds all the sudden it calculates a completely different total and says the XXXX I moved to my credit builder account only chipped away at a - {$1400.00} dollar balance. Then I get paid the next day and same thing, the money moved to the credit builder card pays it down to what it sits at now, a XXXX dollar balance. 

I have called Chime several times and tried to find a tech support desk to email a ticket with the screen shot. There is no way to do so. Every time I talked to an associate, all whom clearly weren't located in the states and kept rerouting me to one another, they told me that reasoning was some overdraft limit I set of XXXX dollars. 

XXXX. You can not set an overdraft limit of XXXX dollars in chime. The slider bar won't let you. The highest it goes is to XXXX, which is what I have it set at. 

XXXX. EVEN IF it was somehow set at XXXX dollars, i still had a POSiTIVE balance of more than that on my credit builder card that appeared to be the direct result of my deposit. 

XXXX. The Chime employees were describing the card as if it was a legitimate full functioning credit card which may be true in some fine print capacity, but when I replied that the card ONLY let 's me make purchases with my transferred funds, they just kept repeating that I set my limit somehow. It didn't make any sense. Eventually they would just disconnect the call. 

I realize I should have been more skeptical through out this entire process, but I was expecting a win and didn't ask enough questions because things have been hard. 
But there was definitely an error on their part that they were trying to blame on me for something I couldn't possibly have control of. 

I don't want this to happen to someone else.