As previously mentioned, I was loading my Bluebird with US Bank Visa Buxx and Paypal Debit card. And just like that, I was shut down this morning.
The message was very similar to Serve stating to call their account protection services.
When I called, the agent asked me what the purpose of the call was for the day. I mentioned that I could not add additional funds from a debit card. As soon as I mentioned that, she looked at my account and saw there was a hold and placed me on hold to speak to the account protection services.
After she spoke to account protection:
- She asked me if either card were prepaid cards
- I played dumb and had her define and identify which card was a prepaid
She questioned if any of the accounts were a business account. I said yes, the Mastercard which is the Paypal Business debit card. As soon as I said yes, she wanted to make a call to verify my account, but I did not let her. In hindsight, I should have conferenced her in with Paypal and let AMEX verify with Paypal.
I forgot what transpired afterwards, but basically, I said to her I did not want to link my bank debit card to Bluebird because it was over the Internet for security purposes. That was good enough for her to unfreeze my account and tell me it is safe and Bluebird has plenty of measures to prevent unauthorized access. With the quick phone call, I now have a functioning Bluebird again.
Since I was doing this for two weeks, I believe the process for American Express to determine the cards are run on a batch process.
So this doesn’t really sound like “no more debit loads”, just “no more prepaid debit loads” … or did I miss something? Likewise, your Bluebird was reactivated, not permanently shut down, right?
Just making sure I understand what happened since the title of the post seems far more alarmist than the actual situation.
Ed, correct on all your questions. No more prepaid debit loads and luckily, had my Bluebird reactivated. I will edit and add clarification, thanks!
I’m a little confused, isn’t the Paypal a debit card? How is it classified as a “prepaid?”
The phone agent defined a prepaid card as “if there’s no bank/account behind the card” then it is prepaid.
Similar thing happened to my BB account, I was loading $100 from a prepaid debit card 3 days in a row. And on the 4th trial, I got a red messages saying cannot complete this process but the account is not shutdown, I still able to reload, pay bills etc. Just won’t let me load via debit anymore.