I got an email on Friday afternoon from Robinhood that my account was shut down. I know a lot of other people who got this same email. The culprit is that we were loading our account using a certain debit card that was giving us cashback. You would think they would just do the simple thing and just block the BIN, but oh no, they went scorched Earth.
Anyhow, not sure how this will play out since proactively selling my shares would cause a tax liability and it might be illegal but who knows. I didn’t really care about my account anyway, so oh well.
The shutdown flow went something like this for me:
1.
Got an email saying my account was restricted until I provided an id, selfie, and bank statement for the debit card used to deposit.
2.
Claimed review would only take 48 hours, but kept account “restricted” for 3 weeks while the review was still in progress.
3.
Got an email claiming my account would be “deactivated” and that funds would be returned once remediated
4.
45 days after shutdown email, they transferred my remaining balance to a bank account.
It would appear that a Robinhood shutdown is permanent.
the same thing happened to me except they are refusing to return the 5k in the account.
Do they claim that they cannot verify the legitimacy of the funds?
Next thing they might do is claim that “they cannot verify the legitimacy of the funds” in the account and refuse to return money.
They’re not that stupid. Can’t keep people’s money.
See here:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/financial-services/robinhood-1116-881958/complaints
“We are unable to verify the legitimacy of the remaining funds on your account. Therefore, no money remains to be returned to you.” (Robinhood)
“We have closed your account, canceled all outstanding orders, and voided your current Amazon.com Gift Card balance. We took these actions because you were using Amazon.com Gift Cards in violation of our Terms and Conditions. We cannot reissue the Gift Cards or provide a refund” (Amazon)
“Per Walmart’s term and conditions, In the case of fraud, misrepresentation, abuse or violation of the terms and conditions, Walmart reserves the right to refuse acceptance of the card, and to take all available action , including the forfeiture of any remaining card balance.” (Walmart)
“If you are a seller and you violate the Acceptable Use Policy, then… you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages caused by your violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages… PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing balance in any PayPal account you control.” Accordingly, and because you accepted payments into your Account for counterfeit merchandise in violation of the AUP, on , PayPal debited from your Account balance as recovery for its liquidated damages caused by the aforementioned AUP violations” (PayPal)
These are all common phrases used by various companies to steal your money.
that is exactly what is happening to me.
You should F’ with them back…and file a complaint with the CFPB https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ and the SEC – https://www.sec.gov/oiea/Complaint.html.
F, it…at this point you’ve got nothing to lose…but there may be a chance they get B-Slapped by one of these agencies for their actions!
Surely they borrowed the same bot that Paypal used to shutdown scores of people too. But will then rethink when the blowback gets intense too.