Leave a Review GoHenry by Acorns Kids Banking
Scam? Gross incompetence?
I signed up for a one month free trial for my teens at the end of July. In retrospect it was a silly thing to do as they are old enough to access other types of cards including real debit cards. But the ad claimed that they had educational content and implied it had more ability than the app appears to to set types of chores/ tasks with allowance amounts attached. The app immediately prompted me to set up the accounts, invite my kids and put some cash in the app to allow them to start earning money while we waited for the promised debit cards. Weeks passed and no cards. I contacted customer service in app and they told me my apt number was missing, but that I needed to email to get it fixed.
So I diligently emailed, including all necessary info. I waited days and received a response asking for the exact info already included in the email right in front of them. I respond again with the info. Days pass again. All this time I received texts and emails reminding me to activate the cards we have yet to receive. Finally they respond to the email saying that I should expect the carda by Sept 1st. It's now a week past that date and still no cards. In the meantime I was charged for this account that I frankly have just wasted 20 bucks on apparently. Totally unprofessional.Show lessIveyA_M
Developer Response
Hi there! We are very sorry to hear about your experience. We understand how disappointing it can be when you don't receive something you are really looking forward to. We are a financial service for children and are on a mission to make every kid smart with money! In order to do this, we do have many features to support finanical literacy such as the tasks/allowances feature as you mentioned! You can set this up during the card activation. We also have an in-app learning game/feature called Money Missions. To learn more, please follow this link: https://www.gohenry.com/us/learn/ If you have still not received the card and have been charged, please can you kindly get in touch with us again so we can look into this further for you? Do feel free to reach out to us via any of the following channels: Call us on (877) 372-6466, email us at help@gohenrycard.com or use our livechat service on our website: https://us.support.gohenry.com/us/s/ - All our services are open between 9am - 5pm EST, 7 days a week. We look forward to hearing from you. - Naomi 😊Be careful!
Been a GoHenry customer for many years but now starting the process of looking elsewhere after what just happened. My daughter tried to use her card to get the bus home and it was declined and she was stranded. This is unacceptable. The reason being the exceeding of GoHenry limits - but the limit on her card weekly/daily is £500 and she’s spent £92 in total this week. I tried to contact help to ask why - it makes you fill in an irritating form even though you’re logged in the app. Then I was 7th in the queue so I had to wait. Came back a couple of mins later and I was disconnected and had to start the form and the queue again. I give up. I think the app is fine for younger kids when you’re there and it’s just a bit of fun. But for an older teenager who might rely on the card working for serious use, nah, I think it’s too unreliable. And the customer support is terrible Bye GoHenry been a good run but you put my children’s safety at risk and that’s unacceptableShow lesslh49
Developer Response
Hi there, I'm so sorry to hear this. This doesn't sound right at all! Please contact our customer support team at 0330 100 7676 and we'd be keen to help with this matter. We are open everyday from 8 am - 8 pm. - Inaaya 😊Teaches kids the value of money
My kids mother and I live a couple hours away from each other and my daughter lives with her mom and I come visit on the weekends. I use to give her cash and would have to ask her mom if she’s been listening to her n doing her chores and of course I leave it up to her mom if I should give our daughter the allowance. This app makes it that much easier to come up with the decision on how much to give her every week and instead of her mom having to think back on what she’s done. Now she does her chores and has her mom check the boxes off. Also You can’t get back lost cash but at least if she loses her card (which she hasn’t done yet) we can just transfer the money back to our cards, have her buy what she wants with what she’s earned for the time being until another card comes in.Show lessI’m lexx
Developer Response
Hi there, thank you for your 5* review! We are pleased to hear the GoHenry app is working well for you and your family and making life easier when it comes to pocket money! If you have any suggestions on how we can make the GoHenry app even better, please let us know! - Abbie 😊I love the app, hate the wait
I got GoHenry through Acorns. I already had a different family debit card program similar to this, but since it was included in my Acorns, I wanted to compare and decide which to stick with.
The good (what I like here vs our other card place):
1. The lessons to teach kids and teens about money.
2. The estimated interest payments make it easy to decide if I chose an appropriate amount.
3. Ease of having spending and savings and moving the money between the two (the other place had a weird system for creating savings and we had to order another card and store in a safe place).
4. Ease of set up
5. Gift links are a nice touch so family can send money
6. Co-parent allows me to add my spouse, relatives allowed me to also give my sons dad a way to send him money easily.
7. Works with Apple Pay (per Apple age requirements).
8. Easy to add money to parent account.
9. Transfer with friends QR codes are great for my teen.
What I think could be improved:
1. tasks could have the option of being paid immediately when completed or weekly instead of just weekly.
2. I wish their debit cards would arrive. It’s been nearly 2 weeks. They were estimated to arrive today but I doubt it since it’s a holiday, but I’ve never had to wait this long to receive cards with anyone else.
3. I don’t feel like I understand the xp and awards for the lessons.Show lessBekky90
Developer Response
Thanks for taking the time to leave us a 4* review! Thankyou so much for providing such detailed feedback, and we're happy to hear that you're enjoying the service overall. If there's anything that we can help you with, we would be more than happy to help. You can email us at: help@gohenrycard.com or call us T: (877) 372-6466 our lines are open from 9am - 5pm EST 7 days a week - DanMy GoHenry Experience
After my few years of owning GoHenry I have had a lot of fun owing this banking app. I was generally quite surprised about the stuff on the app- such as lessons that taught me various money habits such as saving, budgeting , spending, and more. I really enjoyed all the lessons and I wish I could learn more about all this money management information! I particularly appreciate how many options of fun credit card designs they offer for us to choose from! My whole family use GoHenry, and at Christmas I get transferred money from many relatives to spend on whatever Christmas stuff I want! I also like how we can also do chores and get a weekly allowance as I think that’s quite handy. Additionally it is also nice to see where we spent our money and what categories we usually tend to spend it on. I think GoHenry is amazing, but I think everything has room to improve on Earth! I think offering more educational lessons would be fantastic, as well as providing line graphs or more detailed bar charts on what we spend our money on, so we can really get a visual of what we do.
Thanks so much for helping me and my family with everything you guys provide! I would definitely recommend GoHenry for any eager kids out there who want to start banking!
- A very pleased GoHenry Owner :)Show lessMyReviewsAndRatings
Developer Response
Thank you very much for your review! We are so pleased to hear the GoHenry app has worked well for you and your family. It is great to see you are using so many of the features we have on the GoHenry app, and we hope this has helped you learn all things money! We appreciate providing feedback regarding how we can make GoHenry even better, and if you have any more ideas, please send them to help@gohenry.co.uk as we would love to hear them! - Abbie 😀New member horrible customer service
Shipped the wrong designed cards that they charge you 4.99 each and then they wanted me to pay an additional 10$ to get the new ones sent out simple mistake on their I called and was in the chat with an agent customer service takes forever even though they quoted me I was next in line (what a joke) instead of making things right they closed my account with refund that will arrive idk when, the app itself was great you can add tasks, kids learn about money management but withdrawals and spending is limited and once you reach the maximum you have to wait a week or so But when any issue arises they are tough to get ahold of I would have stayed a customer if they would’ve done the right thing but they didn’t he closed my account without my authorization as I was chatting with him on the app and it kicked me from the platform and chat very unprofessional will never come back to this platform piggy bank it is or another financial institutionShow lessjmarman
Developer Response
Hi there! We're very sorry to hear about your experience. If you have a minute to spare, please can we kindly ask you to email us at help@gohenrycard.com so we can take a further look into this? - NaomiLove it and frustrating
I love most things about the app. However, I click the verify my email and it tries to open App Store and the app and then it doesn't actually verify it so it stays with an exclamation point.
Also, I contacted customer service who deleted my husband's email and account so he could be added as a co-parent and it still will not allow him to create an account. They told me he needs to call in. You know where might freeze over over before he calls and spends the time to do that. It should allow you to add other adults that aren't parents and choose what functionality to give them. What if you have grandparents who wants to manage the account for them and not the parents? Or if you have two parents and two step-parents, nevertheless, you should be able to add the emails of any adult and choose what functionality to give them or not beyond just giftlinks.
I also haven't figured out how to skip an allowance week. I know if you don't check off tasks they don't get paid for them but if whatever reason you didn't want your child to receive an allowance for one week you shouldn't have to adjust the allowance amount all the way down before pay day and then update it again. Similarly to a subscription, you could just opt to skip weeks when applicable.
I love the concept, the money missions, and much of the functionality, but it needs some tweaking.Show lessJillianM33
Developer Response
Hi Jillian, thank you for the 3* review! We are happy to receive feedback from our members so we can improve our service. We only can provide 2 adult accounts to monitor the GoHenry activity, however, if relatives would like to join and send gifts to the children, they can be invited to create a relative account. So we can look into this further for you can I kindly ask you to give us a call at 0330 100 7676 (UK)/ 877 372 6466 (US), join us in Live chat or email us at help@gohenry.co.uk (UK)/ help@gohenrycard.com (US). Thanks! -Delia😊Do not use this app
I cannot emphasize enough that you should not use this app or the GoHenry service in general. The cards get denied constantly for no apparent reason, to the point that my kids were afraid to try and use them due to the embarrassment of having your card denied. The customer service is non-responsive. Good luck trying to find a phone number to call and emails go unanswered for days. When I finally got fed up and canceled the service, they wouldn’t give me the money back that’s left on the cards. They will say they’re going to, but then don’t. I think they assume that you’ll eventually get exhausted and just give up. Maybe some do. I’m still trying though. Maybe they are just truly incompetent and don’t know what they’re doing. Or maybe it’s a scam. Either way, stay away. Check with your back. A lot of them have cards for teens that are more reliable and easier to transfer money in and out from. You don’t need this.Show lessCJB84-NY
Developer Response
Hi there! That doesn't sound right and would like to take a look into the status of your refund and your experience with using our service. Please contact us at 877 372 6466, we are open from 9 am - 5 pm EST, 7 days a week. - SuvechhaI wouldn’t recommend this debit card option
I was pretty excited to try this app and to get cards for all of our kids and get them setup using them. I paid the extra fee for the cutesy cards, and sent a message to customer service inquiring about adding our youngest because we have five kids and when we signed up the app said that each adult could only sign up five kids.
Okay, I figured that meant my husband could log in with the link id sent to sign up our seven year old.
I got a message back saying that the only way to add my daughter was to pay for, and manage, an entire second account. And they understood if that didn’t work for me that I could find a business that was a better fit.
It was that closing that really put me off trying to make this app work. I did find a competitor that allows for five kids.
I was surprised that we never received the cards we’d paid extra for, since we’d paid extra for them, but the company did keep the extra twenty bucks we’d paid for them. That seems pretty sketchy to me. I was okay with eating the twenty bucks when I thought the cards had been shipped. Knowing they hadn’t and that they still chose to keep the money, only refunding the money in my parents’ wallet, really rubs me the wrong way.
The app looks nice. But after my experience I wouldn’t recommend trusting them with your cash.Show lessAutmazing
Developer Response
Hi there. This doesn't sound quite right at all. I am sorry to hear that you haven't received your GoHenry cards either. We only have 4 children to one adult at the moment, but I will pass your feedback on. Regarding your GoHenry custom cards, please may you call (877) 372 6466 or email help@gohenrycard.com so that we can assist you with this further. We are open from 9am to 5pm EST, 7 days a week. - NicolaIf I could give this app zero stars, I would.
We have used this card service for our kids for over a year, possibly over two. If you are considering this card for your children, don’t. You will paying for a service that is horribly inconsistent. Want your kids to have a card they can use locally with their friends? Don’t use this one. Send cash instead. Want to give your kids cards to take on vacation? Don’t use this one. Would be better off in the garbage. At least that will save them from the embarrassment of their card never working. We have our kids limits set astronomically high- higher than I spend in a week. Doesn’t matter. Unless you are using this as a toy and want them to learn finances, run from this card. Ironically, my daughter just got done doing one of their missions where they say that banks are the safest place for your money. Well, it’s certainly not with this company because the money goes in, who knows when it comes out!!! Ever since this company got acquired, it has gotten remarkably worse. If that is possible.Show lessNope1515
Developer Response
Hi there, I am sorry to hear that this has happened, we would love to take a further look into this for you. If you could please call us on 877 372 6466 or email help@gohenrycard.com, we would love to resolve these issues for you. - Nicola
