The past month has been a horrible whirlwind of financial difficulties rooted in an institution called Higher-One. For those of you who have the joy of not knowing this financial service (which I think should be changed to “disservice”), Higher-One is a financial company which handles the refunds and provides a means for students to lose and spend money. Higher-One enables all students to have their school ID also be a credit card in which holds all your financial aid disbursements.
The bottom line is that Portland State University (PSU) has contracted with Higher-One so that I cannot have access of my money through PSU. I must, however, pay PSU tuition, books and all other financial fees through this agency so that my money flow goes similar to this: US Government Financial Aid to PSU to Higher-One to PSU. Higher-One also does not exist as a banking agency where I can talk to an actual person in person (I prefer this method because I can usually win them over with my personality, or stare them down until I receive the customer service to satisfy my needs), nor does this agency provide a customer service team that actually knows how their business works.
Now while this may be thought as a great idea because this arrangement allows your financial aid money to remain separate from personal bank accounts and makes your money very difficult to access which will limit student spending, there are many overriding factors that make this arrangement not the most optimal. Here is a list:
1. Higher-One ATMs are the only source of cash money withdrawal with a limit of $500/day. There are only two in the Portland area.
2. If you opt out of the Higher-One account, your financial aid money will take up to 2 weeks (sometimes longer) to get to you.
3. Customer service and crappy account security makes it your sole responsibility to duke it out with fraud, should money be stolen from your account.
I’d like to focus on point number 3, as this is the most recent event that has ticked me off with this agency. For the past month, I have been trying to get about $600 back that had been stolen from my Higher-One account. Having called customer service to report and close my account, I was told that I would have to call the people who made the transaction and confirm that it was not a transaction that I had willingly made. After being received by a Motel in Illinois (a state I have never been to) I was told I was one of about 60 people who have called regarding the same type of transaction and that the transaction was not made there.
Assuming that this is fraud, I then re-called Higher-One who then told me that I would be charged $20 to report my card lost or stolen (which it wasn’t, someone just had stolen my account information), or I could just close the account free of charge (how nice of them!), but it needed to be liquidated first. Because the amount left in my account was a measly $4.14 and the only options for account liquidation are to:
a) make a credit card charge of exactly $4.14
b) make a cash withdrawal through one of two ATMs in the Portland area
c) have a check mailed to me which would take up to 2 months to process.
Since I am not able to get $4.14 out of an ATM and making an exact credit purchase of $4.14 poses some difficulty, I saw myself in a conundrum not very helpful to the urgency of the situation. Meanwhile, my new financial aid disbursement of thousands of dollars was on its way to be deposited into this account in which the information has already been stolen. Great.
After all of this and in finally closing the account (I ordered coffee and tipped enough to make the grand total $4.14), I was then told that Higher-One had dismissed my fraud report because the account was closed and that I would not even be considered to get my money back. WTF? It has been over a month since this fraudulent charge has been made and this is still where I stand in the matter.
Until I can definitively close my Higher-One account, I have re-opened my account but have liquidated it to a new checking account hosted by Bank of America so that I can still keep my financial aid/school money funds separate from my other personal checking account funds, but if something should happen, I have the support of the well-trained and knowledgeable BoA staff to help me out in such cases. Plus, I get free lollipops, online banking benefits, and people who I can talk to in person.
If you have an existing account with Higher-One through your school, I would highly recommend you do the same.