Tide Account - www.tide.co

Tide is proper deceptive. They will take your money by suspeciouly close your accounts. They sell your data and misuse it. High street banks and other business do not trust transaction with tide account. We are taking legal action about this sham, manipualtive. Please contact me if you are a victime and we wil help you get your money back.

BEWARE of this so called "bank". First of all it's not a business account, heck it's not even a bank! It's just a ring fenced Barclays account operated with an e-money license by PrePay Solutions (owned by MasterCard) and the only thing you get is a 'business' card (bloody Pre-paid too, not even debit). The rest is just fancy PR to appeal to millennials etc. Don't expect the service you would get from a real business account at a real bank...

With this out of the way here is my recent experience: This so called "bank" does not comply with FCA rules when it comes to chargebacks. I signed up with an online financial advise subscription that offered a 3 months free trial. I cancelled the subscription 4 days prior to renewal, but on the renewal date they charged me anyway.

So, I notified Tide right away of this unauthorised charge and sent them the evidence (copy of my cancellation email). I was told to email the merchant again for a refund as this is what their finance partner (Barclays or Mastercard?) advised. So I did, and I even cc'd in someone from Tide, so they can see that I am just being blatantly ignored by the merchant.

Weeks later after me wanting an update she asked me again for all the evidence and a screenshot of the email I sent to the merchant, even though she was copied into said email. Already annoyed to hear that nothing seemed to have happened, I sent the screenshots again.

While all of this 'investigating' was happening weeks and months were passing. According to FCA, the funds should have been credited to my account by Tide within 24hrs of my reporting of the charge and not to be withheld unduly (unless of course my request itself was fraudulent).

Tide only did this after 2 months (7th April) and ONLY because I made them aware of this duty (This has happened with Tide once before with another chargeback, so repeatedly in breach of FCA rules). Instantly after my message they credited my account with the missing amount.

However, on the 1st May they took the money away again and said my chargeback was unsuccessful. No letter of deadlock. No explanation. This would have been a simple case of 4837 (Mastercard chargeback codes), aka No Cardholder Authorization.

While writing this review they actually just sent me the Mastercard report. Now brace yourselves. They put down the chargeback reason as: 'merchandise not received', instead of 'unauthorised charge'. As the subscription was probably active for the past 3 months while this dispute was going on the merchant had easy game to refute this chargeback reason! Therefore Tide had been utterly negligent and incompetent. If they hadn't been so inept and filled out the request properly, as requested from the set out, this chargeback would have been granted in no time.

Now I have been waiting another 5 days (mind this has been going on for 3 months now) to hear back from them after making them aware of their mistake. I was told there would be a response within 3 days, but nothing. I will now have to take this to the FCA/financial ombudsman to take this matter further.

People, please do yourselves a favour and DON'T entrust your hard earned money to these dilettante fintech startups. They are just Incapable of managing and protecting your money.