Discover Fraud Report

[Anonymous]

Hi all I'm new to all of this so bare with me please.

So I've been battling discover since September over a fraudulent charge for a hotel. The issue was I never stayed in the hotel because I was out of the country at the time in a different hotel with transactional proof. The merchant claimed I made the reservation through booking.com while booking.com says I never had a credit card on file for that particular booking so they aren't sure what's going on either. So I disputed this twice and it was ruled in favor of the merchant. However I was advised by discover to contact the security team because it was fraudulent and pointed towards someone gaining my cc number. Today I talked to security and they agreed it was suspicious activity and they would further investigate with a fraud report and close down all of these accounts.

I'm upset at the inconvenience of this all. For one discover was due to report to the credit bureaus 12/2 however because of this they told me it would take up to 90 days for them to even do so now and they wouldn't report as normal. I am in the process of trying to get a car and auto loan so this is making me anxious because I wanted a report where my utilization was low. Also I'm nervous after all of this discover will somehow rule in favor of this merchant again.

What next steps do I need to take and how does this affect me possibly getting an auto loan?

[JVille]

Booking.com would have had an email address in the confirmation for that reservation. Was it yours?
Discover normally immediately sends a new card with a different CC # immediately when your card is involved in something like this. Have they done so?

[Anonymous]

Yes I found out booking.com did have my email for the reservation however they said that my credit card information was never submitted for the reservation so it should have been impossible for them to even charge that particular card.

Discover is sending a new card due in about two days but my concern was how long does the fraud check normally take. I waited a whole month for a credit update and then all of this pushes me behind again.

[RobertEG]

You first need to file a formal dispute with the creditor under the Fair Credit Billing Act, section 161.

An FCBA dispute must be filed no later than 60 days after the creditor first provides billing notice to the consumer of an asserted charge.

The creditor is then precluded under FCRA 162 from reporting any delinquency on billing of the disputed charge until the dispute is resolved.

If you are outside of the FCBA dispute window and the creditor does report the amount and any delinquency to a CRA, you can then rely upon the provisions of FCRA 605B to get the reported information blocked from your credit report provided you provide the CRA with the required items detailed in FCRA 605B, which includes a police report asserting that the information resulted from identity theft, and your statement that you never authorized the asserted account or transaction.

Blocking under the FCRA 605B identity theft process does not  include any involvement of the creditor, and is a procedure that permits the information to be blocked from your credit report, and thus not affect your scoring, regardless of whether the creditor concurs or has verified the accuracy.

[RonM21]

Op, it's unfortunate when this happens. I had it happen to me once and it was on my Discover card. They alerted and contacted me about it and took care of it with no issue. I hope this gets resolved for you soon.