Consumer complaint received 2024-11-18 00:00:00
Product: Prepaid card — General-purpose prepaid card
Issue: Trouble using the card — Trouble getting information about the card
Company: True Link Financial, Inc.
State: CO

Complaint narrative:
I believe TrueLink financial and the fiduciaries that use this card as part of their service are preying upon elderly consumers specifically. One use for the true Link Independence card is to disperse inheritance/trust payments. My first red flag was when the fiduciary company that was putting me on the true Link card asked me to close all my other bank accounts and just use the true Link card I of course refused why would they ask me to do that? I have noticed that the card gets rejected when it shouldn't be. I always have a hard time paying my top dollar bills with it my XXXX insurance is one example. It will be blocked numerous times and will not show up on The ledger as other block transactions do. So it doesn't even record my attempts to pay the insurance and I will have more than enough money in the account to cover the insurance when it gets rejected. XX/XX/XXXX I tried numerous times I even was on the phone with XXXX and the charge would look as though it was going through but then it would just disappear they transferred me to billing they had the same issue. I've waited till XXXX at night and then all of a sudden the charge went through. I have a theory on this when there's no one at work monitoring it then those charges will go through if that makes sense but if they find a way to reject it and make themselves more money than I'm guessing someone has some sort of control that way I don't know maybe that's a far reach but I am telling you that the charge wouldn't go through it was attempted numerous times and didn't even show up on the ledger as a failed attempt. There was no fraud warning no nothing it just was like I hadn't attempted to make the purchase at all. 
In another instance I witnessed the numbers on the true link ledger for my account changing. I've checked to make sure that the amounts shown are not being pre-authorized for too much when these transactions are declined or blocked I go into my true Link account look at The ledger and I don't see any reason for the transaction to be blocked the amount they're trying to authorize fits what I'm trying to authorize and is well within the amount available on in my account at the time. For instance I was trying to make a {$3.00} charge to the true Link card and I had {$6.00} left on my balance. a the purchase kept being declined and on The ledger it showed the amount I was trying to pre-authorize just {$3.00} and The ledger also showed it was blocked/declined. When I went back online because I was going to call about the trouble getting that transaction approved a few hours later magically the amount showing on the declined original transactions had changed from {$3.00} to XXXX which I did not have enough in the account to cover. Why did the number change XXXX hours later? If they were originally pre-authorizing for XXXX why when I looked when it was being declined did it only say XXXX on The ledger? they went in and changed the amount hours later to a much higher amount to explain why it wasn't being authorized. I was given this card by a fiduciary company that supposedly specializes in elderly financial services to disburse and control the money my mom sends me. I have had nothing but problems with this card because half of the time the money will be on the card but I won't be able to use it to pay the bills I need to pay. The car doesn't record half of this so I have no way to prove it that I'm attempting these transactions and they're being declined for no reason. I can tell you that it was happening with XXXX and XXXX can back me up since they record their calls. We tried numerous times on the XXXX of XXXX and the charge would look like it was going through and then would just disappear. None of the attempts we made were accounted for on my true link ledger. Then miraculously at XXXX XXXX  I tried what was going to be one last time a couple hours later and all of a sudden the payment went through. 
They also put a {$20.00} limit on my cash availability for a while and they told my mother that the withdrawals would be free if I went to an XXXX ATM. Well they failed to tell my mother that the ATM wouldn't charge but that true Link card would charge {$1.00} for each ATM withdrawal. So for instance when the {$280.00} XXXX transaction doesn't go through I still need car insurance so I'm going to go pull cash out put it into my account so I can pay the bill. Since they have me limited to {$20.00} cash withdrawals I have to stand at the ATM and pull out {$20.00} XXXX times and since my fees are {$1.00} per transaction. They make {$22.00} off of denying blocking my insurance payment online and forcing me to go to an ATM to pull it out money in {$20.00} increments so I can make sure my bill is paid and my insurance doesn't cancel. There's something real shady about this company and I really think you guys should look more into it.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation