Banks and credit unions across the United States are shutting down people’s accounts. Now, some people are doing shady business and they deserve to get shut down. But then there’s everyday hard work in Americans that are waking up and their accounts are shut down and they have no access to their money if you deposit a big check that they’ve never seen before, guess what? That’s a red flag. It can get you shut down. If you carry a balance on your credit card for far too long and you’ve never done this before, that can also get you shut down if your credit score takes a massive dip because you’ve increased all the balances across all your credit cards, then that can also get you shut down because you’re paying attention to your actual credit reports and your credit score. If you have an only fans account or you’re bringing large amounts of cash into your actual local branch and positing into your bank account because you are maybe someone that dances for a living, that can also get you shut down. It doesn’t matter if you’re with a large traditional bank or you’re with an actual large credit union. Nobody is safe from being shut down from their actual banking institution.
And now because we have the power of social media behind us, a lot of people are coming forward and talking about their experiences. Let’s look at this one young lady who actually had her sofa bank account shut down.
So I’m currently banking with sofa and my account has been frozen for like a week and a half now and I have been calling them every single day. They have been responding with the same thing. They’re just like, oh, you have to wait until they review it. And I’m like, who’s they? Like, can I talk to them? And they’re like, no, we can’t. We don’t have access to them. Okay, makes no sense. Okay, so I call every day and the, sorry, and they keep saying the same thing, like, we cannot connect you to them. You just have to wait.
And I’m like, girl, I have bills to pay. Like I’m overdue on my bills because my account is frozen. I can’t do anything. I can’t take anything out. I can’t deposit anything. I can’t even like access my account or routing information. Dad, she’s like, okay, well, you’re just gonna have to wait. Okay.
But it’s not just sofa bank, ladies and gentlemen. It’s all these major traditional banks and some of these newer banks and these credit memes. There’s a huge story that grew out in Atlanta, Georgia. A woman got a notification that her actual student loans had been forgiven and she was so excited about it. Then they actually gave her an a refund check for $5,000 in which she deposited into the bank. And then this happened. Check out this story.
And this is a picture of that check for about 50, two hundred dollars from the US Treasury. Lois White was going to use.
It to catch.
Up by and some bills, but when she deposited and check here at chase, they put a hold on it, then locked up her account because they said they couldn’t verify beyond this his city of that check from the federal government.
They sent me a check in the mail saying that my long was forgiven.
This loan came out of the blue from Lois White’s loan servicer. Her student is forgiven. White is one of more than 800,000 Americans who have been paying for more than two decades getting the one time adjustment this year. Many also getting a refund. This check for more than $5,000 arrive from the US Treasury shortly after.
This was a bless sense.
At least it was until white posited the check into our chase bank account.
Apparently they couldn’t. This set was.
Real. Cheese first flagged the check from the US government as potential fraud. Then locked up and eventually those whites whole walking at this to our money on real because I.
Oh my God, I’ve never, and I feel like a criminal, like I’ve done something.
Wrong. Even after white went back to her loan servicer to obtain this confirmation of the refund and the check. Chase refused to budge. I.
Went to the branch, I gave them this letter, let’s check stuff. My.
Idea, first, two security.
Car. Just hours after Channel 2 Action News reached out to chase, executive offices contacted white to say they are now researching her case. A chase spokesperson told us in a statement, quote, we are working with our customer and the United States Treasury to verify any funds she is due. But for now, lowest swipe not only does not have access to that refund check, chase is holding all her money.
Last parts, the most important. These are just everyday hard work in Americans that are just putting money into bank accounts, and these banks are just going crazy. And I think that these banks are looking at different types of risk, and this is exactly what’s triggering it. But at the end of the day, that one with the actual check that was given by the US Treasury Department, that one is mind blowing to me and I believe it should have never happened. It’s pretty crazy how she got her entire account locked out. There’s another tip I’m gonna leave you here with is to understand that one big thing that can also trigger some type of review or getting your account shut down is when you’re using Zell or Venmo and you’re running too many transactions through those actual subsidiary companies where you’re sending money and receiving money, that can trigger some type of actual risk factor and have them shut down your account.
Now these situations don’t just happen with actual bank accounts. They happen with credit cards. Credit card companies can get suspicious and just shut down an account for no apparent reason. And I’m gonna give you a good example that’s gonna shock you.
I got woke up in the middle of the night by my actual apple phone, let me know that a bunch of transactions had been declined and the credit card on file was with, guess what, crediting pen fed. None of this made sense to me at all because that card had already been on file for close to a year now and it already had those subscriptions running through it. But I was like, is the card maxed out? There’s no way. I think it was like a 6,000 or 8,000 dollar credit card. I was like, there’s no way this card is maxed out.
So I logged into my account and guess what? The account was closed. So I had to pick up the phone and call Penfet and figure out what exactly was going on. Penfet told me I need to submit copies of my driver’s license, Social Security card and actual proof of my residence, which could be a utility Bill and a pay stub in which I obliged. And I submitted all this information through their system.
And then I waited about a week and a half and nothing happened. Nothing changed. I was like, nobody contacted me. I was like, this is weird. So I picked up the phone and called them again. And I was nice the entire time throughout this entire situation. I said, is it just weird that you guys are asking for this information after it’s been close to a year that I’ve been a member with you. What’s really going on here? I mean, you could just be honest with me.
And she said, well, we normally do, you know, random checks with clients or members after a certain amount of time and we verify information is still accurate or we need to update the information. I said, okay, well, that’s fine. But you guys still haven’t responded back to my actual submission of all the documents. And then in which later she said that actually your accounts gonna be closed permanently and you will not be able to use that credit card any further.
And I said, okay, so after I submitted all my documents, you’re telling me it’s still closed. Like, why is that? She’s like, I don’t know. I can’t really tell you.
So I pushed the envelope and ask to speak to a supervisor and ask to speak to a manager. And then I got to the bottom of it. And the answer that they gave me as to why they closed my account and they would not open it back up because they could not verify my employment. Not one time have I ever alluded to the fact that I am self employed or that I own this company, that they said they could not verify my employment at. So I asked them, well, that’s kind of crazy. So nobody in the company told me that you’ve reached out to him. I’ve asked everybody and there’s been no phone calls or anything. So how can you say you could not verify my employment when you actually didn’t verify it? And if you went on to Google, you can Google the company, it’s everywhere because there’s a lot of actual articles about our company and what we’ve been doing. So I don’t understand how you can say you didn’t verify, but no worries, we’ll just shut this account. I’ll pull my money out of my checking account and we’ll be done. It’s not a big deal. I’m gonna close the account.
You’re probably wondering why I’m not really upset about this. I’m not upset about this because we’re at the mercy of these banks at the end of the day, whether it’s a bank or a credit union, we’re at their mercy. And I understand that. Guess what? They’re just gonna shut the account. I’m gonna move on. I’m not gonna be upset about it because I’m going from having two hundred and fifty six thousand dollars of available credit all the way down to $250,000 of available credit. It’s not a big deal to me, but so a lot of other Americans, it may be a huge deal because this could be their main bank account. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket because if you have to shut down an account or they shut you down, then you have the same problem that these other people had in these actual news articles and on TikTok, that’s where we found that other story. There’s so many other situations like this, and every single one of them point to the main problem they’re banking with only one bank, with multiple banks, multiple credit units. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket because you can wake up one day and it can be all gone and then you have a big, huge nightmare in front of you.
As you Learned earlier, penfet is not a good crediting to bankrupt if you are self employed. Now, you never want to put that yourself employed on a credit card application or a bank application. You always want to put that you’re employed because of this exact situation, but we’ll just move on and we understand that. So I hope you enjoyed the video. Make sure that you watch the next video because it is about another major credit union. And if you felt that I brought you some value in this video, make sure that you don’t forget and subscribe to increase your credit score.