{"id":1247,"date":"2011-03-08T16:08:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T00:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2011-03-08T16:08:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T00:08:18","slug":"highlighting-the-danger-of-non-gift-prepaid-card-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1247","title":{"rendered":"Highlighting the danger of non-gift prepaid card fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prepaid card issues have been pushing non-gift prepaid card since the Federal Reserve finalized gift card rules for the Credit Card Act of 2009 and this recent news blurb (<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704638504576186943625775016.html?mod=WSJ_Heard_MIDDLETopNews\" target=\"_blank\">Wall Street Journal Overheard<\/a>, 3\/8\/11) perfectly demonstrates the fee traps that exist more than ever in non-gift prepaid cards.\u00a0 As a reminder, the Credit Card Act of 2009 gift card rules exempt non-gift prepaid cards from the rules on disclosure and fee limits.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Price is everything for Wal-Mart Stores&#8217; customers. So users of its  popular prepaid debit card, managed by Green Dot, may be surprised to  hear they still run up $3-a-month fees for up to two months even when  their balance hits zero.<\/p>\n<p>Many simply never use the card again. But those who do may find these  fees and a regular $3 reloading fee deducted. For somebody depositing  $100, that adds up to a painful 9% hit.<\/p>\n<p>While monthly maintenance fees are disclosed by Green Dot, the  cardholder agreement doesn&#8217;t specify that such fees can push account  balances into the red. The only place to learn that level of detail is  in Green Dot&#8217;s SEC filings, notes analyst Thomas McCrohan of Janney  Capital Markets. Everybody knows the importance of reading the small  print before signing up for a new financial product. But trawling  through the 10-Q?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s a new low for both puntive fees and lack of disclosure for a prepaid card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prepaid card issues have been pushing non-gift prepaid card since the Federal Reserve finalized gift card rules for the Credit Card Act of 2009 and this recent news blurb (Wall Street Journal Overheard, 3\/8\/11) perfectly demonstrates the fee traps that exist more than ever in non-gift prepaid cards.\u00a0 As a reminder, the Credit Card Act [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fees-breakage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}