Privacy Com

I have been using Privacy.com for years, and the service when it works is great. They have an amazing business model here and again, when it works, it's fantastic.

Backstory:

I had a password license for a program I use that I needed to use one time.

I paid for a "license" to use the program, which I later found out was a "license subscription" when the "license" renewed. I went to cancel the subscription service and discovered that the cancellation process involved giving even more of my information than was needed for the license. I remembered seeing an advertisement for Privacy.com and thought this could be cool, I could create one-time use cards for things I only needed one time use for, and it came with an abundance of other cool features like "merchant locked" cards. I started using Privacy.com for all of my online transactions including, and especially my recurring payments.

Having a separate card for each service that I could pause, or cancel put the control back into my hands where, and when, my money went.

Problem:

I tried to create a card the other day, and it failed to create because my account was "paused". I looked into it and discovered I had my account "paused" because I added a funding source to my account as I have multiple bank accounts. I looked online to see if there was a way to fix the account paused issue myself, and the only thing I could find was "email support@***.com" so I did that. I got an automatic reply response "we're working on it, We'll try to get it done in 24 hours, but it may take longer." I figured ok, one to two days later it'll be fine.

Then I started noticing my account transactions I use Privacy.com for were being declined.

I looked into the transaction declines in the Privacy app, and they all say "Transaction declined because account was paused" It doesn't make sense to me why they would stop the existing account funding from working when adding a new one, but they did.

It's been three days now leading into the weekend and I still haven't gotten anything except for the automatic response "we're working on it" replies from their email bot.

Meanwhile my accounts are failing to process payment, and they're starting to become suspended. Customer service is non-existent, and if I don't even get a response back by Monday at the latest by a human, I will be cancelling my Privacy.com account and reverting back to just using my credit card or looking for an alternative service to Privacy.com.

TLDR;

So Fair Warning, if you use privacy.com only connect a single funding source from your account, and instead have multiple privacy.com accounts.

I would like to rate this zero or even negative stars for the prolonged and significant stress and frustration this purchase caused me. I never got to assess the quality because unfortunately I received none of the items and had to eventually file a dispute and go through months of waiting to definitively get the money back.

It all started with my mistakenly making the purchase with Privacy.com especially since I had never purchased from this company before. I say mistakenly as in it was a huge mistake because based on my using that method, they cited the fact that I was trying to defraud them as the reason why my package was never shipped and I never received it. However, they didn't tell me this right after the purchase but instead waited until I sent them an email after seeing a tracking number but no progress in shipment after several days. They proceeded to never respond back after I explained the situation and verified my information.

I emailed them several times until it seemed they blocked my email address somehow. I also proceeded to use their chat function as well as contact them by phone. They never answered the phone and didn't call back after leaving a message. They did respond by chat, but the promised refund did not materialize in the time frame provided.

When I tried to go back on there later to inquire about the refund, they found a way to block me there as well. I ended up having to file a dispute with Privacy.com and the bank from which the funds were ultimately from, and only there was I able to get a chargeback. This whole ordeal started back at the end of last year, in December, near Christmas. I just successfully got the chargeback permanently approved today, nearly three full months later.

Long story short, I would not recommend this company nor using Privacy.com to make purchases on the Internet. I will instead be using PayPal exclusively.

Painful lesson learned. I've never had problems using other payment methods before that weren't resolved without a fuss by PayPal, and I hope I continue to have success with PayPal as I feel neither company really served me well here.