What is Chime?
Chime states that it is a financial technology company founded on the premise that basic banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. The company claims that it wants to profit from its members, not from them. That’s why their model doesn’t rely on an overdraft, monthly service, minimum balance, or other consumer fees.
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Chime partners with regional banks to design member first financial products. This is aimed to create a more competitive market with better, lower-cost options for everyday Americans who aren’t being served well by traditional banks. Chime promises to drive innovation, inclusion, and access across the online banking industry with alternative solutions.
Chime claims that you get many exclusive features you cannot get with traditional banking platforms. You get to enjoy features like no hidden fees or charges, no overdraft fees(up to $200) get paid early with direct deposits, 60,000+ fee-free ATMs at the stores you love, and more.
Chime also has a mobile app for both mobile device platforms Android and iOS. And its app is an award-winning mobile app that has everything you need with a simple and intuitive design. it also boasts more than 135000 five-star reviews on app stores.
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Why deleting your Chime account is a good idea?
Even though Chime provides a lot of exclusive features to make its customers happy things aren’t always on the positive spectrum when it comes to its customer satisfaction. There are issues that have troubled many customers and made them regret their choice of using Chime as an alternative banking platform. Let us take a look at some of these events that have transpired which made customers rethink their choices. These details might make you want to delete your Chime account and find a better alternative that suits your needs.
Ever since Chime began its operation, it advertised itself as an alternative online bank. But in reality, it is not an actual bank but a financial technology company that provides banking services using its partner banks i.e. Stride Bank and The Bancorp Bank. These banks are responsible for handling all of the banking transactions that take place on behalf of Chime.
Since Chime is not really a bank it has had problems with the law and authorities. It was discovered that when its computer systems faced an outage, the company was describing itself as a bank, in violation of state law in California.
So in May 2021, Chime was forced to stop using the term “bank” in advertisements according to complaints by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.
The most controversial thing about Chime is the way that the company has closed the accounts of its customers without any prior notice or explanation. The company attributed this as an accidental outcome of fraud prevention tactics deployed by Chime. And on top of customers losing their accounts, some of them were even denied the money in their accounts. Some customers claimed that they were denied of balance in thousands of dollars which were outright unfair and illegal.
Even though Chime is a relatively small company compared to other banking giants like Wells Fargo, it seems to have received quite a lot of complaints from its customers. And when Chime tried to solve such issues, it was a slow and painful process. Even though some issues were solved, some remained unsolved for a long time and some didn’t even receive a factual reason behind their account closure. From the complaints filed against the company, many were because of accounts being closed against the customer’s will. And many of the complaints were found to be mislabeled or labeled inconsistently as well.
After knowing about these issues you might want to rethink your choices and delete your Chime account and prevent yourself from getting into financial trouble caused by the company against your will or knowledge. If you want to delete your account this article will help you do so in the right way.
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Ask Tech Support Live NowWhat happens when you delete your Chime account?
When you delete your Chime account you will lose all your data associated with your account permanently. You will no longer be able to access the payment features through the Chime app on your phone and you will lose all the exclusive features that you used to get. And the Chime Visa Debit Card will also no longer be valid for payments after you have deleted your account. You will no longer be able to make any payments using the Chime app or the Chime Visa Debit Card anymore.
Other users will no longer be able to send money to your account either. And the transactions that were connected to your Chime account will no longer be valid like your subscriptions or recurring payments on third-party sites for the services that you had previously signed up for.
If you want to use Chime again you will have to create a new account and set up everything from the beginning. And you don’t need to worry about your credit score being affected if you don’t have a negative rating or balance on your account.
Before you delete your Chime account
Before you delete your Chime account you need to make sure you can delete your account in the first place. You need to fulfill a certain list of criteria before you are allowed to delete your account for good. Let us take a look at what you need to make sure of before sending a deletion request.
- Remove all your cards and bank accounts tied to your Chime account.
- Make sure you don’t have any remaining balance in your Chime account.
- Check that your Chime account’s balance is non-negative. If so, you will need to clear all the remaining dues and payments.
- Ensure that there are no pending payments left on your account. If so go to the payment history and cancel any remaining pending payments that might be charged to you.
- Check and make sure that there aren’t any remaining refunds that might be credited to your account
And remember that until you clear your overdraft amount on your account you will not be able to delete your account. So you need to clear your negative balance before you send in your deletion request. If you send a request before clearing your overdue amount your request will be denied.
How to delete your Chime account?
You can delete your Chime account by contacting the customer service team via email and requesting them to delete your account. Follow the steps below to send an account deletion request:
- Step 1: Open your email client associated with your Chime account
- Step 2: Compose an email to Chime customer support at support@chime.com
- Step 3: Enter “REQUEST TO DELETE MY ACCOUNT” as the subject of the email
- Step 4: Now in the body of the email, request the support team to delete your account permanently and remove all your personal information from the platform. Be sure to include your identifying information like your email address or phone number.
- Step 5: Click on send after you are done writing your email
The Customer Support team may take some time to get back to you depending on their user traffic. Since Chime’s support is known to be slow in solving user issues, remember to be patient and wait for them to contact you back.
A confirmation email will be sent to you once they have gone ahead with the deletion process. If there are issues with deleting your account, you will get a follow-up email explaining why and what you need to change to make it possible for you to delete your account.
Delete Chime account via phone
Alternatively, you can directly contact Chime’s Customer Service via phone at 1-844-244-6363 between 7 am and 9 pm on all days of the week and request the support staff to cancel or delete your account.
How to cancel your Chime Visa Debit Card?
To cancel or disable transactions on your Chime Visa Debit Card follow the steps below on the official Chime app on your mobile device (Android or iOS) or visit Chime’s website at www.chime.com :
- Step 1: Log in to your Chime account using your account credentials i.e. email address and password
- Step 2: Go to the Settings page
- Step 3: Go to the Security section from the list of options
- Step 4: Now, turn off Chime Card Transactions
After you have successfully completed these steps, your Chime Visa Debit Card will be canceled and it will immediately prevent your card from being used for any more transactions.
How to appeal for an account deactivated by Chime?
If your account got disabled or deactivated by Chime, you might have been suspected of fraudulent activity on your account by Chime’s anti-fraud system. If you didn’t do anything wrong you can contact Chime’s Customer Support via email at support@chime.com or you can directly give them a call at 1-844-244-6363 between 7 am and 9 pm on all days of the week to sort out the issue.
Email support might be slow, so you might have to wait for some time before you get a reply from a support representative looking into your issue. If your issue is urgent you might be better off giving them a call.
How to stop receiving notifications from Chime?
After deleting your account, all push notifications from the Chime app will stop completely but Chime will send you email notifications about new events and promotions even after deleting your account. If you want to stop receiving all email notifications from Chime you can choose to unsubscribe from all email notifications from Chime completely.
To do this just go to your email associated with your Chime account, go to your inbox, find an email from Chime, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Unsubscribe and confirm if it asks you to. This will mute all future email notifications from Chime from now on.
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