Worst Card Experience I have had in 50 years of using plastic
I got my first pre-pay card in 2010. Just over a year later, the issuer switched to a debit card linked to my bank account, so I switched in June 2011 to a different pre-pay card. Then in April 2016 it was merged with another card issuer. That lasted...
Read more I got my first pre-pay card in 2010. Just over a year later, the issuer switched to a debit card linked to my bank account, so I switched in June 2011 to a different pre-pay card. Then in April 2016 it was merged with another card issuer. That lasted less than a year, then they decided that pre-pay cards were not economic when they also offered normal credit and debit cards. The pending closure was announced at the start of 2017, at which point I opened my Pockit account. Up to that point I had been very happy with pre-pay cards.
It soon became apparent that although the balance in the card seemed to remain accurate, the statement software on the website was a complete joke. I have recently looked through the online statement, and the first debit from the account was on 19th January, 2017, but according to the statement the first credit into the account was on 23rd April, by which time I had spent over £1100 on the account in over 100 debits. There are many other examples of discrepancies in the online statement.
I have been downloading the monthly statements and archiving them since I got the card. These show differences from the current online statement. Also, recently I download the last half dozen monthly statements, two of which differ from the downloads I made after the respective months finished.
There are various entries for transactions that simply do not appear. It is often possible to identify a missing entry if I log in with an Internet browser rather than an App. In the statement, I click on an transaction, and it will show me the balances both before and after that transaction. Then I go back to the statement and click an adjacent transaction. If there is a missing transaction then the corresponding before or after balance will be wrong by the amount of the missing transaction. This tends to happen when a site does a test authorisation. I registered the card with Amazon on 9th December 2017, and they took out a £1 authorisation. The transaction did not complete and on 17th December the £1 was adjusted back on to the account. The authorisation appeared as a debit on the 9th and the refund appeared on 17th, but the original debit entry disappeared when the refund appeared. I downloaded the December statement on 3rd January, and this shows the refund but not the original debit. If I go back to those dates in the online statement, neither are now appearing.
Service tickets raised with the Pockit Team got no satisfactory response. They just fobbed me off with a vaguely related answer and closed the ticket. Absolutely useless. I had to keep a spreadsheet so that could know the true state of the account and not the lies that Pockit seemed to be presenting.
The Android App had over 2000 of my transactions cached on the phone. When I logged in sometimes it displayed cached rather than current data even if there is an Internet connection. At one point it was over £40 and 13 transactions behind the true position. Often it fails to show there is no Internet connection and does not warn that the displayed blanace is not current.
Pressing the 'Home' button to leave the App can leave the account sort code and number visible in the list of recently used Apps. The Pockit Team showed no interest in this security risk. On one occasion it showed the sort code and account number of the bank account from which I had topped up the card.
Then recently I started getting transactions declined for no apparent reason.
Eventually I found out that they publish information about problems on Facebook. I am used to banking Apps showing me any specific service news in the App and not having to search elsewhere.
Finally, after over two and a half years I was hit with a 99p monthly fee for the first time and without any warning. I decided to empty the account. That was supposed to be a free transaction but they charged me 99p for it.
