Company can’t be bothered to explain anything
Update: I have been advised that the hold is because I linked a bank account, instead of a debit card. I am very frustrated because the app strongly encourages linking a bank account—there is no indication that a debit card is necessary (or even preferred). At a bank, I can read disclosures to avoid situations like this. Because Greenlight is not a bank, the only way to find out their rules and preferences is by blindly triggering a hold that takes 1 week to resolve. My wife and kids like the app, so I’ll give it one more chance. I expect that we will not maintain the service for more than a few weeks, considering the poor quality thus far. Still keeping the 1-star rating because the company staff are very unconcerned about any of this—it’s like they have heard these complaints already. 👎👎👎
Company locked kids’ cards because I (the parent account owner) manually transferred money to the wallet. No notification about the lock until a card was declined several hours later. Then a phone call resulted in no explanation, and a vague promise to send an an explanatory email within 4 business days. Company says they’re available to assist 24/7, but they won’t provide any additional information for me. Unless they have a VERY good explanation, I’ll be closing account. I strongly recommend avoiding this awful company and its lack of concern for providing a usable service.
Company locked kids’ cards because I (the parent account owner) manually transferred money to the wallet. No notification about the lock until a card was declined several hours later. Then a phone call resulted in no explanation, and a vague promise to send an an explanatory email within 4 business days. Company says they’re available to assist 24/7, but they won’t provide any additional information for me. Unless they have a VERY good explanation, I’ll be closing account. I strongly recommend avoiding this awful company and its lack of concern for providing a usable service.
Show less
Response from developer
Thank you for sharing this with us. We are truly sorry about the experience you had with Greenlight and we'd like to make this right. Please reach out to us at support@greenlight.com or give us a ring at 888-483-2645 and reference this review.
Good until it wasn’t
My kids really enjoyed earning their allowance on their cards but recently the app was no longer able to connect to my bank account. I ended up having to cancel and deactivate greenlight. You have to make sure to deactivate and then call to request a refund. These are two separate processes that you have to complete and are not made aware of when you deactivate the account. Also, after I called to request a refund, I received an email that stated I will be receiving $0 back, which was not the amount discussed over the phone. I called back to ask for another email with the correct amount and they stated this could not be done. I just wanted a paper trail with the correct amount but this could not be completed by the customer service team. I will be waiting to receive my refund in the next 7-10 business days and hopefully I will receive the amount I am supposed to. I just felt that the customer service team could have handled the situation better.
Show less
Really good app but could use some fine tuning
Seeing that I am on the child end of Greenlight, and I don’t know what issues my mom might have with the app, being a 12 year old learning about saving, investing, and stock exchange in school, Greenlight is perfect. I do have a suggestion though. I really like the Level Up thing where it teaches you about spending and investing, and it’s great…except i’ve finished all the lessons on both topics with all three stars. So i’d be great if you made more lessons or more topics so we can learn more, and get more exp because for some reason, I’m still on level 5 and I can’t go up because I can’t get any more exp. Also can you add more stuff to the reward shop because I’ve gotten all of the backdrops and now I’m stuck on level 5 with x amount of coins and I can’t do anything. ALSO Greenlight has a giving option and my mom was like, ‘Oh that’s great! Now you can give for offering during church!’ and I was like, ‘Cool’ so we went to go and try to add my churches giving app I believe and for some reason we couldn’t find it or it didn’t work so we ending up having to put it in my savings because it was supposed to be 70% spend; 20% save; 10% offering/give; but we had to make it 30% save and 0% offering/give. If you could make it easier for giving options, it’d really help us out. But overall the app is really good. Have a great day/night.
-Madi💵💡(greenlight)
-Madi💵💡(greenlight)
Show less
Couldn’t even get started with clunky app
I set this up and the verification amounts never came through. I waited over a week — well over the “3-4 business days” the app says it will take. When I tried to remove my banking account to then try and re-enter it, the app message said I had to verify the account before removing it. Obviously I couldn’t verify it since the verification amounts never came through! Then I tried to add my banking information again as a “second” funding source and it said I couldn’t add another source without verifying the first one. Good grief. I called for help (as the app directs) and there was a major communication challenge. I think the individual was continually reading from a script but couldn’t understand what I was saying at all unfortunately. This didn’t inspire much confidence that customer service would be able to solve any future issues. I canceled my account. I hope they can change this issue in the app and better support their customer service team with improved training and tools to help people.
Show less
Lawsuit waiting to happen
I’m legally 18, still in high school but I no longer live with or have any contact with my parents due to an abusive situation with years of CPS records. Greenlight support can’t do anything to remove them as guardians on the account to give me control. I have emails of my pay stub proving that I earned all the money on the account and I was never given allowance so none of the money was from them. Greenlight is in no way responsible for my delt-hand in life however any credit union or bank I’ve talked to automatically hands controls over to a child as soon as they turn 18 if it’s in their name. I believe they should have someway to manage a situation like this the way any other bank would and for these reasons I have found it frustrating and unreliable. All the money I had so far scraped together to get myself through college to build a stable life for myself is now unaccessible. I have all the documentation I would need to take my parents to court but unfortunately no funds. There are many wonderful reliable parents out there and this app is great for them but there’s no insurance or help for anyone who is or has been in an unreliable environment.
I am fortunate to even have a place to stay for now.
I am fortunate to even have a place to stay for now.
Show less
Response from developer
Hi there. Thank you for sharing this with us. We're sorry about the experience you had with Greenlight. We would like to look into this for you, but can’t locate an account connected to your username. Please reach out to us at support@greenlight.com or give us a ring at 888-483-2645 and reference this review.
Worst Customer Service ever! Look into other companies before signing up with Greenlight!
Greenlight would be the perfect way to help kids and teens control and save money as well as teach them to be responsible with money at the same time. We got Greenlight debit cards for our 15 and 11 year old boys to start preparing them for spending responsibly, saving and unexpected expenses , etc. I set up the allowance auto funding once a week only for completed chores which is awesome as well. My 11 yr old was at a friends house and went to the store and his card was declined and keep in mind we don’t have restrictions on his card! My son was really embarrassed and actually thought that I didn’t pay his allowance which really hurt me and some of his classmates teased him over the declined sale. This was 3 weeks ago and this issue has not been resolved yet I can’t seem to speak with anyone and no return calls. They state that they have 24/7 customer support! That’s not true at all. At this point I’m frustrated and jut want to close our accounts and be refunded . Greenlight you are wrong for the horrible customer service that you are so proud of!
Show less
Scammers
I really wish I could give you guys a 0 star rating but I will settle for the 1 star. I got this card for my kids and it was fine at first until they started receiving gifts from their grandparents. My dad tried to load money to the card for my child but it didn’t go through on our end even though they took the money out of his account, he did receive a refund after threatening to report them. They ended up locking my kids out of their account and said that I must repay every deposit my kids received from their relatives(even though nobody disputed the transaction) all because we didn’t load the money on the card the correct way. I finally got through to customer service and they told me that they locked the card’s because we didn’t load it money on the card as a gift. They told me in order for me to get their cards unlocked I have to repay them over $300 which is what my kids received in all from their grandparents during their time using this card. Why should I have to pay you to unlock my kids accounts for money that was never disputed, by any bank?? Don’t make any sense to me and customer service didn’t make the situation better. I will be reporting you guys because I still have money in my wallet in the account and I can’t access it and my child do as well. Horrible company and I do not recommend anyone use them either. Get it together Greenlight.
Show less
Response from developer
Thank you for sharing this with us, Nitteya. We're sorry about the experience you had with Greenlight and we'd like to look into this for you. A Greenlight team member will be in touch with you shortly.
We love Greenlight
We love everything about GreenLight so far… I am on GreenLight Max and have 4 children on there. I’ve only used it with one child so far so my opinion may soon change…
We love the ability to add chores and limit how much our children can spend on online gaming… We also love the idea of the new feature where kids can get direct deposit if they’re working! With a teenager I’m sure this will soon be very useful!
Two things I’d love to see:
1. The ability to edit the order the children show up at the top of my app… I added my middle son first because he was the person that introduced me to GreenLight initially… then I added other children. I’d love to be able to put them in order of age! That would be so helpful and would ease my OCD so much!
2. Like another parent mentioned… the ability to add another whole parent wallet… not just add a parent to your account. If you’re divorced and the kids go to dads you wouldn’t really want him in your own “wallet” but would want him to be able to access your child’s bank account to add money from his own bank… The only way I see around this is the other parent setting up their own account and ordering a whole new card for the same child… bummer. What child can keep up with one debit card… much less two?!?
Thank you developers!!
We love the ability to add chores and limit how much our children can spend on online gaming… We also love the idea of the new feature where kids can get direct deposit if they’re working! With a teenager I’m sure this will soon be very useful!
Two things I’d love to see:
1. The ability to edit the order the children show up at the top of my app… I added my middle son first because he was the person that introduced me to GreenLight initially… then I added other children. I’d love to be able to put them in order of age! That would be so helpful and would ease my OCD so much!
2. Like another parent mentioned… the ability to add another whole parent wallet… not just add a parent to your account. If you’re divorced and the kids go to dads you wouldn’t really want him in your own “wallet” but would want him to be able to access your child’s bank account to add money from his own bank… The only way I see around this is the other parent setting up their own account and ordering a whole new card for the same child… bummer. What child can keep up with one debit card… much less two?!?
Thank you developers!!
Show less
Overrated & Bad Customer Service
The Greenlight card has a good idea behind it but compared to other teen banking apps it easily loses. I got the Greenlight card a few years ago and recently closed my account because even though it says you can withdraw money with an ATM it never let me do that, I have tried 3 different ATMs and none of them worked. There is also no way to deposit cash in to the account, and there is no way to send money with Apple Pay or Google Pay etc. you can only use Apple Pay or Google Pay to buy stuff, plus you can’t do any bank transfers or send money with Cash App, Venmo etc. Also I have to mention they have the worst customer service, when I closed my account I had money remaining in it so they said they would send the money back to the funding source linked within 7 bussiness days and they only sent $8 out of $148 so and I’m stilm trying to get a hold of them so I can get my money. If you want to get a debit card for teens I recommend Step Mobile which is actually free compared to the monthly fees of Greenlight and it has all the things that I mentioned that Greenlight doesn’t have.
Show less
BEWARE!! Use at your own risk!!
While the concept is great and the app and account functions worked great with the kids!!! Here’s my experience, YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED!! they do not follow the same rules as banks. I had an unauthorized charge on my kids account. I called the same day to dispute the charge and the agent said it was just an authorization and it could fall off and advised I called back after so many days to make sure the charge goes through and then I can file a dispute. Well I did this and now my dispute has been denied multiple times and they won’t refund the money. Terrible customer service!! They could have stopped the charge from processing from the first day. This company will not protect you funds were taken out of my child account and they really don’t care it’s really not worth as much drama, when there are so many other companies out there that will look out for you I regret referring this company to my friends and family I will make sure to have them close their account before they lose money I still cannot believe what I have gone through with this mess!!! BEWARE!!
Show less
