On October 9, 2012, I was high on the promise of American Express’ Bluebird prepaid card and “bank account.”  By November 2 of the same year, I had enough, as I mentioned in a comment on my original Bluebird review:

Bluebird is majorly sucking. On Oct. 31, during Halloween Sandy, we received an emergency email from Bluebird support that my wife’s account had been locked for “security reasons.” We decided to spend precious battery time in the middle of a power outage to call and find out what was happening. It turned out someone else was trying to login to her account and instead of locking THEM out, AMEX locked out my legitimate wife from her account! Madness! Terrible security. Why punish the innocent party by making them call in and go through a 15-minute security test when we aren’t the ones causing the login problems?

Just now, we received another freaking email from Bluebird about the same issue! My wife’s account is locked for security reasons! She hasn’t tried to login to her account for days! I’ve been trying to reach AMEX support for 30 minutes. Lines into the Philippines tech support center on this Sunday are clearly not working. What a hassle!

I’m thinking we will have to cancel our Bluebird account.

Today, I made good on my promise and canceled my Bluebird account over the phone — unlike AMEX Serve, Bluebird accounts cannot be canceled online — and the only reason I waited a few days to pancake Bluebird was because I first needed to zero out my balance with an Automated Clearing House (ACH) withdrawal to my bank account, and Bluebird, unfortunately, takes many days to process any ACH transaction.

Continue reading → Why I Canceled American Express Bluebird and Opened a Brokerage Account Instead