Balance Financial Walgreen's Balance Financial A hassle to its consumers Shelton Nationwide

After having used this card for the past 6 months, I experienced the following problems:

1. Immediate activation? Lie. When you buy this card, you will have to provide a lot of information such as your social security number to the sales clerk, but then you will still need to come home and speak directly with Balance Financial to activate the card.

2. "Shop everywhere Debit MasterCard is accepted" Lie. At a minimum of once per week, I would have transactions declined such as a $10 fast food order despite having adequate funds on the card to cover the charge, even though the merchant accepted MasterCard

3. Direct Deposit. Balance Financial tells you that you have "immediate access to your funds once they post.' What they do not tell you is that by once they post, they really mean they have the right to hold your deposit till they manually review the deposit. Some times this takes hours, other times, it takes days depending on how long it takes them to get verification of your deposit, and it doesn't matter that they just verified the deposit last week or the week before. Your deposits will be revieweed manually. Once this took 5 days, other times, I did not get access to my direct deposit till the day after pay day. It also doesn't matter that it is the same depositor, for the same amount, done weekly or not. 

4. Customer Service. I have called customer service numerous times. Most often I get representatives from other countries that do not speak English well, nor do they understand what you are calling about on a frequent basis. Supervisors are unavailable to handle issues the representatives can not solve themselves. 

5. Merchant holds. The clerk at a gas station mistakenly put a gas purchase through the wrong way on my Balance card. This resulted in $100 being held for 14 calander days, even though the merchant ~immediately~ issues a release of funds. Balance Financial only accepts ~faxed~ releases with a confirmation number, which they refused to issue to the merchant.

Bottom liine on this card is they promise "...time is money, so we've loaded the Balance® Financial Prepaid MasterCard with all kinds of convenient, timesaving features." but what they deliever is a product that will result in you spending hours on the phone with them trying to gain access to your funds, constant frustration when they are unable to provide you with the answers you need and the constant anxiety of wondering if your card will work for this purchase or if your deposit will be available in a timely manner.