I have a story to tell which is half a request for advice and half a rant about the frustrating situation I’ve found myself in. If you don’t feel like reading it, the TL;DR is: Early last month, one of my Chase cards was used for a fraudulent transaction of a little over $25. I received an alert on my phone for the transaction, so I was able to start the dispute process immediately. Spoiler: Chase doesn’t believe me, and they’re trying to make me pay for it.
Here are the details…
Background on my credit card behavior, which might or might not be relevant: I’ve had credit cards with Chase for about 8 years, plus a checking account and a savings account. I use my cards for everything and typically spend $1,500 - $3,000 per month across all cards, and I do not carry a balance. My overall utilization is always under 10%, and usually closer to 2 or 3 percent. I have never missed a payment. All of this makes me think I should not be considered a risky customer.
During that time, I have experienced credit card fraud probaby about 3 to 5 times. This has always been pure fraud, never an attempt on my part to receive compensation for goods or services that were missing or unsatisfactory. In other words, I have absolutely never abused the dispute system or even pushed the limits of what it’s meant for. Of course, there’s no way I can prove that here, so you’ll just have to take my word for it for the purpose of this topic.
The most recent time a fraudulent charge occurred was last month. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it, because it was for a small amount, and I’ve learned over the years that CC companies want to do their best to keep you comfortable, making the fraud dispute process as smooth as possible. At first, their handling of it seemed pretty typical: They said they were going to remove the charge. They also mentioned that there had been a (fortunately) declined charge for several hundred dollars on the same card around the same time. It happens that this was an account I don’t use very often, so I asked them to go ahead and close it too, which they did. And that was that. (So I thought.)
For good measure, I even looked up the phone number of the store where the card was used and spoke with the manager, who kindly took some time to review his security footage and found images of the people who had paid using my card. He sent me screen captures, which I still have. In case it needs saying: These people were not anybody I know or recognize.
A couple weeks later, I received a letter from Chase saying that they had reviewed my fraud claim and that I would be responsible for the transaction, with the reason: “You received benefit from this transaction.”
Let me remind you that this was not a transaction I had any part in. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with something and wanted to get my money back. It wasn’t a friend or family member using the card. It was fraud.
At this point, I was angrier with Chase than I have ever been—which doesn’t really do justice to just how angry I was, because the truth is Chase has always been fantastic for me prior to this. I spoke to a number of representatives, both from the regular customer service dept. and the fraud dept. and explained everything I knew.
An interesting detail that seems to be important here: One of the representatives I originally spoke with told me that the impacted card had recently been activated after one with an updated exp. date was sent out to me, and the just-activated card had been physically present for the transaction. For them to say this as if it mattered, I assume they must have meant that it was a chip read, because “card present” for a magnetic card doesn’t really mean much. This kind of caught me off guard because I couldn’t immediately think of any explanation for this. At first I just told them all I could, which was that I couldn’t think of any explanation for what they were seeing. Maybe that honest answer doomed me.
When dealing with CS reps, I tried everything I could to get them to remove the charge, including asking them to simply remove it as a general courtesy for me as a customer, regardless of whether they agreed it was fraudulent. None of this was effective. They even told me that the fact that the account was closed meant it was impossible for them to issue statement credits. The way Chase suddenly went from seemingly top-notch service to stubbornly blocking every attempt to recover such a small amount of money came as a bit of a shock.
However, the fraud team agreed to reopen the investigation and said it could take up to 15 days. Well, at that point I had had enough of Chase for a while and decided to stop calling them, and just wait for their investigation to wrap up.
But, after thinking about the sequence of events that led up to this, a possible explanation for the “card present” transaction started to form in my mind, which I now believe is very likely accurate: I did receive the updated card, and I did activate it and put it in my wallet, even though I don’t normally keep that card in my wallet (again, a rarely used one). When I did this, I didn’t immediately destroy the original card because I knew it was in a safe place and I could destroy it later. Then, the updated card was physically lost or stolen out of my wallet, without my knowledge. Because I normally don’t keep that card in my wallet, its absence didn’t raise any red flags for me. And because I had forgotten about having received an updated card, the one I destroyed when I closed the account was (unknown to me at the time) the old card. This last part about destroying the old card is definitely accurate, even though I don’t have knowledge of exactly how or when the new card left my possession, other than that it was shortly after activation.
I called Chase up again and explained my new theory. I was careful to make it clear that I was not certain that this was what had happened, but I believed it was the only explanation that made sense given their claim about the card being physically present. This was not an attempt to speed the dispute resolution along, just an extra bit of info for them, which they noted.
Fast forward to mid-July: I received another letter from Chase in which they said: “We confirmed that the transaction(s) is valid.” and “We assure you that we researched your fraud claim thoroughly.”
I’m done being angry at Chase. I already closed all of my remaining Chase accounts after their first letter, and now I just want this to be over—BUT, I am still having a hard time bringing myself to pay for this fraudulent charge. Has anyone else gone through something like this, and do you have any advice for next steps (even if those next steps are “give up and pay”)? I really want to be able to continue trusting credit cards as a “safe” payment method, but this is making it difficult.
