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Comment by arcastroe | Hacker News Reader

If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear the Cash App story. Seems like a slap in the face for them to terminate your account for trying to resolve an issue with their service.

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In very quick summary: I bought a product online using my Cash App debit card. Turns out with more research company was a total scam. After 6 weeks of not shipping anything I asked for refund. They shipped "something" to me, but FedEx failed to deliver the box (said I was out but never even came down my street) and the package was returned to the sender. Sender closed their corporation and opened under another name and continued scam.

I asked Cash App to do a chargeback. They told me their system doesn't allow chargebacks where the goods were "delivered." I told them they were never delivered. They argued that they were delivered back to the sender, therefore they were "delivered." I got all their execs cellphones and started politely calling them. One escalated it to their "Executive Support" who gave me the same answer, then my account was terminated. They did issue me a refund as part of the termination, but I can no longer use Cash App which is very frustrating for someone at the bottom of the food chain like me who interacts regularly with people who only use Cash App as their banking.

    In the interest of resolving your dispute, we are providing, as a one-time courtesy, a reimbursement of $93.75 for your transaction with Wibargin, LLC.  Additionally, we are electing to terminate your Cash App account (as allowed in our Terms of Service, section XIII.8).  As a result of the termination of your Cash App account, you will no longer be able to use Cash App and its services going forward.

    You will be able to access your account in order to cash out your remaining funds, however all other features, including the Cash Card, will be permanently disabled.

I hope the absolute contempt CashApp seem to treat their users with backfires on them in the future when they inevitably see actual competition.

Terminating a users account while simultaneously admitting fault by providing reimbursement just screams to me that the leadership team are completely out of touch and don't want to hear a thing from their own customers.

Venmo did this to me in 2019 :)

They thought I was under 18, so they asked for my drivers license. I sent a picture and they responded with:

"Thank you for sending us your ID." "Your account has been permanently deactivated and we regret to inform you that we can no longer offer you the Venmo service."

Absolutely mind boggling.

PayPal recently did this to a friend - asked them to verify their account, then terminated it.

Maybe asking for the ID is a ruse. They already intended to close the account, they just want your ID so you can’t open another one.

I never thought about this before. Instagram asked for this and the literal second I hit upload on my photo it said I was permanently banned with no appeal possible. This is a good scam.

Probably want to make sure you can't sign up for it at a later time.

On a bit of a tangent, something very similar happened to me recently -- splashed out ~£300 for a product and after about 4 weeks of no further contact from the company, turns out it was a scam, and the sender shut down the corporation, website, wiped it from the various archive sites etc.

Fortunately I'd paid using my Amex, and American Express support were incredibly helpful in making me whole pretty much right away. I recall the payment gateway being a Stripe thing, so I really hope the scammer got hit hard somehow.

Thank you for this story - I was this close to get aboard and ask all my 42 employees to get one, now we will move forward to researching different solution.

It's absurd to me America needs some stupid third party app to send money to other bank accounts. In the UK, we can simply login to our bank accounts or the bank phone app, type their sort code and account number, or IBAN for international, and it arrives within minutes but usually seconds.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. Most of Europe the same -- easy, free cash transfers.

It’s because HN is mostly American and can’t deal with criticism focused on that.

This is great. We need more people doing this kind of work. The degree to which company employees and leadership insulate themselves from their customers should be unacceptable.

You shouldn't be frustrated by your account being terminated. Why would you want to continue to do business with such a shitty company. I'd take that as an opportunity to explain to other people "who only use Cash App" for whatever reason, what a shitty company they are.

> I'd take that as an opportunity to explain to other people "who only use Cash App" for whatever reason, what a shitty company they are.

Not only that but the more people they run into who don't use Cash App the more likely they'll start using alternatives to also be paid by those people, giving less of a societal reliance on a corporation who will terminate your account because you used outside channels to resolve an issue regular support wouldn't help with.

What people only use Cash App? I've never come across a member of this group. I'm an American who uses (in declining order of frequency) credit cards, Venmo, cash, PayPal, ACH, debit cards, checks. I don't recall anyone even offering to deal in Cash App, let alone exclusively.

> What people only use Cash App? I've never come across a member of this group.

According to https://www.businessofapps.com/data/cash-app-statistics/

51 million monthly active users in 2022 and 13 million people had the Cash Card in 2021.

People at the bottom of the ladder. All the people I deal with coming out of prison find the quickest and easiest way to get a debit card is Cash App.

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