I had a small balance in Apple Cash and had not made any transactions in a bit over 3 years. I received a text message notice of a “Balance Adjustment” resulting in a $0 balance in Apple Cash. Called Apple Support. They said the balance had been escheated to the state I live in. Approximately 6 weeks later the balance showed up on the state website for unclaimed property. I submitted a claim online today to recover the money. Not sure if the rules being followed by Green Dot Bank vary greatly according to location but I received no notification prior to the money being escheated to the state. I see I’m not the only one to have this experience. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255194987?login=true
An account that is idle for 3 years is (in most states) considered unclaimed property. But it is pretty sleazy that Apple simply remanded it without notifying you.
I have a few investment accounts that see very little interaction aside from scheduled rebalancing. Every few years, the brokerage firm sends me a form to fill out, acknowledging that I am still aware of the accounts.
I’ve seen similar behavior from other banks for seldom-used accounts.
The fact that Apple didn’t send you any such form is not a good sign, and they definitely need to define some new policies and start behaving like a real bank.
I just finished reading that thread. According to the author of that thread, there is no legal obligation to provide notice for small amounts, and so they didn’t.
But that’s still really sleazy. I recognize that the time and effort to process a paper form for a very small amount may not be practical, but there’s no reason why they couldn’t just send (either directly or via Apple) electronic notification that you need to have some kind of interaction with the account in order to avoid losing the funds.
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