Comments on: Prepaid Upside Visa Card For Teens

By: Aaron G

Aaron G — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:27:01 +0000

This card is CRAP!!! DO NOT USE IT. They will take money from your bank account and will not post it to the Upside card for 3DAYS!! So DON’T get an Upside card. Customer service is worthless and foreign based. I am now going to my state Attorney General and file a Fraud report!

By: Van

Van — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:14:55 +0000

Terrible “customer service”. My daughter got an Upside card so I could send her money, and it worked fine for about 6 months; low fees, easy to load. Then for no apparent reason they flagged it as “potentially fraudulent” and it could no longer be loaded by any method. The notice on the website gave a number to call for resolution, but no one answered that number; the message said they would return a call within 24 hours and we left our callback number but they never called. We tried this twice and waited a week each time; no return call.

We e-mailed customer service and the form-letter reply just said to call the same number. We called the regular customer service number and they said we had to fax in multiple forms of ID including bank account info and utility bills (she was renting a room and had no utility bills). WAY too much hassle to fix THEIR mistake, so we cancelled the card. The only positive aspect was that they did refund the money left on the card without charging a fee.

To be fair, I’ve read reviews of other prepaid cards and found the same complaint about many: fine as long as there’s no problem, but as soon as there is a problem they don’t have a way to get it resolved.

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:37:12 +0000

DO NOT ever use an UPside card. My daughter was 16 and traveling internationally, so I thought it was worthwhile. It is FEE city: $29.95/year plus $2.50 to load from a credit card, $3.00 overdraft, etc. BUT WORST OF ALL – their ACH load from my bank account failed. They initiated two identical loads on the same day and I was out $200 because they could not track the duplicate load. RUN from this company!

By: Susie

Susie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:23:45 +0000

I believe this is a geat card for my teen, Its better than her running around with my debit card from the bank and having someone rifle through her purse at school and steal the number and wipe out our checking acct. I have to send her to the store and sometimes she forgerts to give me back my card. I am not worried about her building credit yet she will in time. I just want to protect the money I send her to the store with. If I gave her cash she would be more inclined to spend it at school and someone may steal that too. Kids in the schools are sneaky.

By: Vicki

Vicki — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:50:13 +0000

They also have an Upside CLEAR plan that is FREE. the only fee is if you load it from a credit card. Otherwise if you load it from a bank account it’s free (it just takes a few days to hit).

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:39:34 +0000

I cannot believe some parents would prefer to give a credit card to their child just for the sake of saving $25! We all know how that works, they have no annual fee but they make tons of money on the APR….
By the way, Upside also has an entry level product without ATM access but no annual or monthly fee…This card is by far the best deal out there!

By: CardMaven

CardMaven — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:54:55 +0000

Geesh. Do you have any kids?

By: BloggingBanks

BloggingBanks — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:29:33 +0000

CardMaven,

I strongly doubt that this debit card builds credit history for anyone.
I still believe that $25 to pay is a lot since it doesn’t teach kids any responsibility. If you are not taught any responsibility by your parents, then your life will be very difficult. If parents kept the $25 and instead taugt their kids what’s right and what’s wrong, a co-signor card would be beneficial in for everyone.
If they don’t then the $25 is th first drop in the bucket of fees the family is going to pay.

By: CardMaven

CardMaven — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:30:16 +0000

Blogging Banks: Many parents don’t want to co-sign a credit card for their kids because they’re worried they won’t be responsible with it. They’ll overspend, fail to pay the bill, exceed the credit limit, run up big fees and actually hurt their credit score. This prepaid debit card is like a credit card with training wheels. Much less likely that first spin will result in skinned knees and big battles with kids who are already stressed about being away from home for the first time. Plus, there’s no way that your kid’s bad behavior will come back to hurt the co-signer’s credit score. Is that worth the $25 a year annual fee? Oh yeah.

By: BloggingBanks

BloggingBanks — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:45:07 +0000

That’s not a good deal. Only irresponsible parents would sign up for a card that charges them fees. A much better thing to do is open a card under the kid’s name with the parent as a co-signor. That way your kid builds credit history, and you have a much wider availability of no-cost credit cards..

Did I mention that I don’t like credit card fees? Paying Annual fees is not a smart thing to do.