Consumer complaint received 2020-11-30
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account — 
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc (NY)

My complaint is about Venmo. I believe they have unfairly frozen my account for either some kind of technical glitch, or a basic app design flaw on their part, for which I have been blocked access to my own money to make vital payments. 

In XXXX of this year, I switched my checking account from XXXX  XXXX XXXX to XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX, I updated my bank account in the Venmo app and set the new XXXX checking account as my primary payment option. I've attached as " Email 1 '' a record of adding my new account to Venmo. 

As soon as the following day, I was using this account for payments and bank transfers when I received funds. I've attached the first verification of transferring funds as " Email 2 '' for reference. 

For three months, this was the default payment option and I made all payments to peers from this bank account, and received funds from peers that transferred to this bank account. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I made a purchase through the XXXX app that had payment through Venmo as it's selected option. ( As an aside, I'm not exactly sure why this was my setting on XXXX. Perhaps because I had redownloaded the app and the payment got reset, for some reason, because I had been paying through a credit card for Seamless purchases ). For some reason, Venmo charged this purchase to my previous XXXX  XXXX XXXX bank account, rather than the new XXXX account that I had added to my venmo account and selected as the default payment, which I had since closed. Typically, when you purchase something through Venmo, it will show you where the payment is coming from. I didn't get any such notification, perhaps because it had been purchased through the XXXX  app. 

A week later ( during the same week I had been using my venmo account for peer to peer payments without issue, all through the XXXX account ), I got an email notification that the purchase had not been able to go through because it had been attempted to go through my XXXX  XXXX XXXX account. I've attached this as " Email 3. '' Venmo notified me that my account had been frozen as a result of this. 

After receiving the email, I attempted to rectify the situation by having the payment go through my XXXX account. I couldn't immediately figure out how to resolve the issue because you can't do it through the app, you have to use the website, which was onerous, but nevertheless, I directed the payment to the proper account. 

However, my Venmo is still frozen, and remains frozen until the payment from XXXX XXXX which is already reflected in my bank account ) finalizes for Venmo. 

Now, here is my main complaint. Venmo is so ubiquitious now for payment, from paying friends back and splitting the dinner bill, to business transactions and paying rent, that being frozen out of your account and unable to access your own money is an extreme and legitimate hardship. It can be humiliating to tell a friend, " I can't pay you back immediately, because my Venmo account has been frozen. '' They will think that you are struggling to pay them, or must wait for the next paycheck. However in my case, the app was frozen because of poor explanation and/or poor design of the app on Venmo 's part. 

I wrote -- very angrily -- to Venmo, asking why this one purchase had been linked to my previous bank account, when I had updated all payments to go through my new XXXX bank account. They told me that this was my fault, that I had not gone to various merchants within the app and updated the payment in that place. 

Let 's look at the Venmo app ( at least as of today, when I took screenshots of the app ; perhaps there have been changes since XXXX XXXX. In " Screenshot # 1, '' we see the settings page in the app. A reasonable person would go to Payment Methods, add their new bank account, and delete their old bank account. You can see in " Screenshot # 2, '' again this is as of today, that I have this setting for my new XXXX bank account, and a credit card. 

One must also go to Backup Payment, you can see the settings in " Screenshot # 3, '' and can select your new bank as the default bank account, when the balance carried within the Venmo app would not cover the charge, which I did and you can see in " Screenshot # 4 '' has my Chase checking account selected as the default, which I did back in XXXX. 

So, a reasonable person would believe that they are all squared away, that all payments through Venmo would go through the XXXX account, and for three months they did, until the Seamless purchase. 

Upon writing to Venmo, they told me this error was my fault. That I needed to go to " XXXX XXXX, '' which you can also see in " Screenshot # 3, '' and updated separately my preferred payment method via the XXXX  app. ( I have since disconnected any and all merchants from my Venmo app, so this mistake never happens again ). 

I would argue that a reasonable person, after updating their bank account and default back up account, would believe that they were all ready to go. That it is not intuitive, nor was it written out for me to see anywhere, that I would have to update separately an account for XXXX. I don't know why the default bank account would not just be the default bank account for everything. Venmo says this was my fault, and that I should have known better. 

In the meantime, I have been frozen out of my account, and remain frozen out of my account. The customer service people at Venmo refuse to unfreeze my account, and I remain unable to make important payments, without access to my own money. 

Furthermore, as I have made many, many payments now, over the months, through my updated XXXX account, I do not know why there should be a freeze until they can " validate '' the account. In fact, I had paid through Venmo and the XXXX account, only a day before I got the email about my account being frozen. 

I reason that Venmo was not clear enough in how to operate their app, if not being intentionally deceiving, and that freezing people out of their accounts, in how important ( perhaps unfortunately XXXX that Venmo is to people 's personal finances, is an overly harsh punishment for users, whose only mistake was to fall into Venmo 's own carefully laid traps, and had no reason to believe they had not taken every measure they were supposed to take to update their methods of payment.