Aspiration Financial LLc, is the moving force green or greed

           Aspiration Financial LLC is a non bank that claims to care about the planet. For each purchase you make using your Aspiration debit card you can opt in to round up to the nearest dollar and donate that portion towards planting trees. So in other words if you buy a soda n pack of gum for example for 4 21 that remaining 79 cents is donated. 

          I joined this financial instruction years ago and I absolutely loved it! I loved it until that financial institution showed me its true colors! This is another story from first hand experience folks. Use caution when choosing to bank with this financial institution. I own a small business under the name of Eazy Creations. 

          Back before I had the problems I had with this financial institution, my business kept my family going. I started this business for one reason only, to help my better half achieve his lifetime goal because he helped me achieve one of mine and it meant the world to me! Now before I explain some of my reasoning behind this article I'll advise you to look on this website

https://www.depositaccounts.com/banks/aspiration.html

Deposit Accounts, this one

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/aspiration.com

Trust Pilot, and finally this one

https://www.bbb.org/search?find_country=USA&find_text=aspiration&page=1

          Now these aren't the only places you'll get real reviews but it's a good start. You'll also see some of the fake reviews posted. This is where my research of learning how to represent myself in court got started. So in the summer of 2021 I received a small business grant from the SBA. I was cautious how I used the funds because of the grant's purpose. 

          I also had a separate account that I used for personal spending. So I kept them separated. On 07/23/21 I received that deposit into this Aspiration account. Now many of you that have experienced the issues I have have been told that Aspiration does not hold business accounts. This contradicts the ASPIRATION FINANCIAL, LLC CUSTOMER ACCOUNT AGREEMENT that you signed when signing up. 

          In the agreement it states that you can have joint accounts AND ENTITY ACCOUNTS. So don't let this financial institution fool you. It is ALSO not a bank, it's a broker dealer with a cash management account and if you actually go read that agreement carefully you'll learn a lot. It may be necessary to educate yourself on the inner workings of this institution. 

          Also research the actual number of trees planted ProPublica is one of my favorite sources and they wrote an article on the number of trees actually planted here's that link. OK moving on I will tell you this from personal experience you can fight this non bank for your monetary loss all you want but unless you've got plenty of money to throw away on a lawyer odds are you will likely lose. 

          I'm a sore lover of a lawsuit against this non bank. I lost $5,500 to them. Here's the maddening part, get ready for this. After many emails and app enquiries and receiving no response I called this institution to speak to a representative. The rep verifies my identity phone etc and then without giving me a chance to speak said "Please be advised Aspiration is ceasing all forms of communication with you effective immediately" and then the call was disconnected. 

          In disbelief after the first call I attempted to call back but received the same result. By the third call my phone number was blocked! I initiated a FINRA claim under the impression I was able to do this without a lawyer. Being that I had tons of proof to back my claims I was certain I couldn't lose. Man was I wrong. So I noticed my funds were being depleted quickly. I logged in to look at my transactions. 

          Anyone who uses this institution knows there is a $1000 dollar a day withdrawal limit. I noticed the very day I received my deposit $1912.00 was withdrawn from my account or at least that's what the record reflected. I brought this to the reps attention via email after a couple of emails in an attempt to convince me what I had seen, took screen shots of, and what my monthly account statement reflected was wrong, 

          I stopped hearing from them all together. At that point I was locked out of my account as the app said for security purposes, my phone number was blocked, and the institution became completely unresponsive to my emails. I later learned that I was placed on a "Cease communications silent solve" as the discovery paperwork stated. So this institution decided to turn the tables and shift blame on me! 

          They handed my account over to the United States Secret Service and accused me of fraud. Smart move maybe if I was actually fraudulent. I proactively sent the Secret Service a petition. The agent who I will never forget was so kind to me. When we spoke we went over my previous years tax forms among other things. He noted that my taxes seem to align with one another year after year so that looked normal. 

          He kinda chuckled and said most people send in a 2 or 3 page petition. I sent in a 380 plus page petition so he did believe that I was not fraudulent. I suppose that was an attempt to deter me from following through with the lawsuit! It didn't, however the end result was the same. I was completely blindsided by the FINRA arbitrator. 

          At that hearing the one witness that the financial chose to appear the day of the hearing was a former employee of FINRA. He was employed for nearly 8 years with them just before our hearing. My arbitrator was clearly partial to the financial institution. He refused to hear anything about FINRA rule violations or misconduct. In fact he strictly stated that we were only focusing on my monetary loss. 

          His demeanor during the hearing was not ethical in any way. Up until right before the hearing we were scheduled for an in person hearing. Right about two weeks before the hearing he backed out and decided he was only willing to do a virtual hearing. I should have known then something was wrong. However I had already been called paranoid by Aspirations counsel and I allowed that to influence my own judgment. 

          I felt maybe I was starting to get paranoid and overthink things. I trusted in the system and trusted that my arbitrator would remain neutral but that was a huge mistake. 

So after the hearing I was working on filing a motion to set aside the arbitrator's decision. Keep in mind I have no prior experience on how these things work. I had no idea what properly stating a claim for which relief can be granted meant. 

          In fact I'm still learning that process because it's more complex than it sounds for someone with no knowledge. Ultimately the end result was just before my filing deadline, I had experienced a very traumatic event. My home was unlawfully searched by Cps the chief of police and my landlord which I now am attempting to challenge in court. All they had discovered during that search was that my home was a mess. 

          It was a coordinated attack however and threw me into such a state of shock that it took months to comprehend the level of malice it took for those individuals to plan the invasion and the following chain of events. Anyhow, I was so distracted with the situation

I MISSED THAT DEADLINE! The point of this article is to bring awareness to those of you who use this institution or are considering it!        

         You'll do your research first if you're smart. This company probably spends a large chunk of their revenue on just marketing. So you have to sort of dig to find the truth meaning if you click on the links above scroll until you see a negative review once you find one you'll be surprised at all the others that follow.

          I may not have prevailed at my lawsuit but I still follow the reviews from time to time and last I checked they're still doing this to people. I have no idea how they're still operational. I read a review that said a person committed suicide because of this institution. I've read reviews that this institution has locked accounts just after receiving deposits from social security someone then back pay checks, and it caused homelessness. There is a petition you can also sign on change.org if you have experienced it.

https://github.com/eonlegal/Aspiration

          The purpose is to obtain enough signatures to have them investigated. I'll tell you when we reached the discovery stage you would be surprised how many different ways they proved me to be right with their own documentation. Also they had a data breach which was not disclosed to all customers. I know first hand my account was accessed using two factor authentication by a FINICITY platform. 

          From what I understand, it's a banking platform. USING TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION to log into my account. It's all in the documents THEY sent me. I was able to tie those logins from FINICITY to using my own email. There was one other banking platform that was using two 2FA to sign into my account as well. This took place around the same time they admitted to having a data break. 

          Yet they claim my account was not affected. My card was locked and shut down though. I just recommend anyone using this institution for banking services use heavy caution. That's just my opinion, if you're lucky and it's not happened to you, I've not brought these facts to your awareness and given you multiple sources of information to confirm my story. I will also provide a photo of my bank statement showing 1912 withdrawn while the limit is $1000 just for good measure. 

          I just truly do not want this institution to get away with any more fraudulent activity. It's truly a shame they have not been reprimanded thus far. I HAVE LOST ALL FAITH IN FINRA