Chime Card Closed Account & Took My Money! Are They Legit?

Chime Card Closed Account

Update 12/2/2020: I (Danny) has a similar experience as Shawn regarding my Chime account. I filed a CFPB complaint after not being able to access my Chime account and not receiving any explanation why it was closed or how I could get my money back. After almost two months, Chime finally replied to the complaint.

After a complete review of your account, we determined that your account was inactive for a period of time, therefore we exercised our right to close the account registered to you in accordance with Section (I)(C)(11) of the Deposit Account Agreement titled Account Dormancy and Escheatment https://member.chimebank.com/account- agreement. On the same day, the remaining funds in the amount of $XXX.XX were moved to Escheatment. You will need to review the Unclaimed Funds process within the state of New York for additional details on how you can receive their funds.

This was an account that had received multiple referral bonuses. Accounts for other family members which had also not been used for years were not closed. So it seems like they are selectively enforcing their inactivity clause.

You can read the original article below.

I have admittedly never been a huge user of the Chime Card. I used to use it for various offers they had years ago, but hadn’t really used it in years. That is until I received the following email a few weeks back touting their new referral offer.

A Decent Offer

Since this was an offer I thought was worth sharing with all of you due to the fairly easy $50 sign-up bonus, I made a single post on Miles to Memories sharing the deal. I didn’t post it elsewhere nor did I do anything other than share the offer as it was sent to me when Chime solicited me via email.

I’m not sure how many referrals I received, but I have emails confirming 3X $50 being awarded to me. I hadn’t thought much about it until last week when a reader said my link didn’t show the bonus. So I went to investigate and I found this.

They Closed My Account

Again I did nothing but receive an email from them and then share the deal as they wanted! The whole purpose of this promotion was for them to get new customers and it seemed to have worked. But they decided to shut down my account for some unknown reason. Naturally I thought it was a mistake, but Chime quickly confirmed that they had purposely shut down my account and taken the $150 plus any other potential referrals.

Hiding Behind The Terms

So I dug into the terms and they don’t say anything other than Chime has the right to cancel customer accounts for any reason. That makes sense I suppose and I have no problem with them cancelling my account, but they took my money. Additionally I didn’t do anything that violated their referral terms. I simply posted the link on a website I own 100%. Alas a follow up email was not returned so I have no more info than what I am sharing with you.

Are Chime Card Referrals A Scam?

While I don’t think Chime Card’s referral program is a scam, I think the company has proven in my case that they are hiding behind their terms and they basically used me for free advertising. They clearly think I did something, but instead of investigating and trying to right a wrong, some low level employee at the company has decided to just copy and paste a response. They basically have told me they can do whatever they want whenever they want. Is that a company worth doing business with?

In my follow up I asked nicely for a supervisor or manager to contact me about my situation and to comment for this article, but there has been no response. I can only conclude that this company really has no care for getting things right nor the customer experience. Again, they contacted me with a referral offer and I shared it. That’s it.

In the end they took my $150 which I have emails saying was awarded. Is that illegal? I don’t know but I’m pretty sure they can’t just take money once it is paid. Is it worth it for me to fight them legally? Probably not, but at least by sharing what happened maybe I can help others steer clear of this very shady (in my personal opinion) company. There are so many debit card providers and banks so I don’t know why anyone would want to waste their time with a company like this given their actions and lack of a response.

Chime Card Closed Account – Bottom Line

Chime Card is a legitimate company and their referral program appears to be legitimate. With that said I was shutdown for no reason and my money was taken and the company won’t tell me why. I don’t think that is a company I would want to have my debit card with (I know a lot of people use them as their primary debit card) and because of that I think I’ll be recommending that friends, readers and everyone else stay FAR away from Chime Card. You just never know when they’ll close your account, take your money and then not tell you why. Shame on you Chime Card.

Need even more reason to avoid Chime? Check out some of the comments complaining about their products and customer services on our post from a couple of years ago. Have you ever had an issue with Chime Card? Have you had a good experience? Share your thoughts in the comments.