Dameda Hopson of San Jose did her taxes online using TurboTax. She says it took her just a couple of hours.
"I got my confirmation emails and everything seemed like it was going fine," said Hopson.
Her refund came in the form of a TurboTax prepaid debit card from Visa.
"I was able to use it right away. Everything was perfect, the balance was there, the card worked fine, everything was perfect and just one day botta boom, it was closed," said Hopson.
She says she still had a couple of thousand dollars left on the card. She called the number on back of the card, but no one could explain to her what happened.
"Well, I went into a panic because I knew I still had lots of money," said Hopson.
She then went online to do more research. She typed in "TurboTax complaints" and found numerous postings from people who had experienced similar problems.
"That's when I was like, 'OK, I have to get somebody involved here.' I'm not getting anywhere. I kept calling and kept saying there's no notes on the account. After about a week, that's when I contacted 7 On Your Side," said Hopson.
We contacted Intuit, the owners of TurboTax. It told us "suspicious activity" forced it to put the card on hold. They do it to protect customers. They said, "In some cases, legitimate cases are caught up in the process. We need to work with them to get it worked out."
Intuit reactivated Hopson's account and she was able to use it once again.
"I don't know where I'd be. I wasn't getting any return calls. They weren't receiving my faxes and I you're just helpless, so I was very thankful I had the information with Michael Finney to get a hold of somebody to get consumer help," said Hopson.
Intuit, citing security concerns, would not explain what caused them to suspect suspicious activity on Hopson's debit card.
