Since August of this year, I have been at war with U.S. Bank over $1200 in fraudulent, unauthorized charges made in Europe to my daughter's Visa Buxx card (which has not left the United States this year). The following letters really say it all:
"Dear Mr. Grundhofer:
I write to describe your abysmal customer service before I contact attorneys to initiate a class action lawsuit against U.S. Bank for damages arising from your failure to honor your contact with your Visabuxx holders.
My story is simple. On August 9, my daughter found her Visabuxx account drained of money. She immediately notified U.S. Bank by calling the customer service number on the back of the card. She was told at that time that she would be sent a form to fill out to document the fraudulent transactions that she identified. It was not difficult to identify the transactions, as we live in Santa Monica, California, and they all were processed with merchants in Europe.
The form for reporting the fraudulent transactions never arrived.indeed, we received several letters dated August 21 in a single envelope from your company stating that we would be contacted if any further information was needed. See Exhibit 1.
As an attorney who has represented banks, I remained concerned about these charges and contacted your company on August 31 to inquire about the status and whether I needed to take any further action. On that date, I sent two emails and a letter, in addition to spending several fruitless hours on the telephone with your customer service representatives who could not answer (and still cannot answer) my questions. My August 31 communications are attached to this letter as Exhibit 2.
Following my August 31 communications, I received the emails attached as Exhibit 3 to this letter. As you can see, in each instance, I replied immediately to any communication from your company. The reverse was not true.in addition, I was repeatedly assured that no further action was necessary on our part to facilitate investigation of this matter.
On September 11, I received five letters from your company concerning the fraudulent transactions. The letters were all dated September 3. The single envelope containing all of the letters was self-marked and dated September 1. Let me emphasize that these letters did not arrive at my home until my regular postal delivery on the afternoon of September 11. Exhibit 4 is a copy of those letters and of the envelope containing them.in the letters, you imposed a deadline of September 11 for us to respond to an August 18 letter that we never received and that was mentioned for the first time in the September 3, letter despite our many inquiries concerning this matter.
I replied via facsimile the same day, September 11, and called your customer service line as well. See Exhibit 5. Finally, on September 11, at 10:30 P.M., Sabrina, CSR # 2865, agreed to fax to me the fraud forms within 24 hours. I received the forms the next morning, September 12, completed them, and returned them to you via fax the same day. See Exhibit 5.indeed, the very fax number included on all of the letters and on the fax cover sheet was not operational so I had to call your customer service line again on the evening of September 12 and was given a second number. I immediately faxed the documents to the new fax number provided, as well as to the fax number shown on your fax cover sheet. Even then, I was requested after speaking to the supervisor, Sam, CSR #2541, to resend the faxed forms to second number (953-377-4438) addressed to Ormela Prashad. I complied with this request
as well. See Exhibit 5.
It is now September 13, and my account still has not been credited for these fraudulent transactions despite countless hours on the phone with numerous customer service representatives. This transcends fraud; it is theft. Your company has breached its cardholder agreement and Visa's no loss guarantee. It also has committed mail fraud. I am able to document my side of the story, as you can see. Can you document yours? I have not spoken to a single customer service representative of your company who is able to produce the "August 18" letter referenced in your September 3, letter. If a letter was sent on August 18, why on August 21, two days later, did you say "if we need additional information from you in order to perform
our research, we may need to contact you"?
As I stated above, I am a lawyer with experience in dealing with these matters. An ordinary consumer with a 9 to 5 job and no legal training would be utterly at your mercy.By copy of this letter, I am notifying the California Attorney General, the Federal Reserve Board, Visa USA, and any consumer or media group that is interested concerning your shoddy practices."
This was not the end of the story, however. The rest is contained in this letter to the OCC and the California AG:
This letter supplements the above-referenced complaint. As you may recall, we submitted forms to the bank identifying five fraudulent transactions on September 12. We received form letters from the bank acknowledging receipt of all of our dispute forms in September.
On October 20, we received 4 (four) additional letters from the bank concerning four of the five fraudulent charges. These letters were dated October 13, but the envelopes transmitting those letters were dated October 18. See Exhibit 1. We responded to those letters on the date we received them, October 20.
On November 1, I spent 3 (three) continuous hours with customer service at the bank concerning my daughter Hilary's account, which I could not and still (two days later) cannot access online. I was informed by the bank at that time that we received credit for the four fraudulent charges relating to the four October 13 letters, but that one of the charges, for $212.76, had not been permanently credited to our account. We have received no additional correspondence from the bank other than the September acknowledgement of our dispute form concerning this charge. We disputed this charge substantially more than 45 days ago, the maximum time allowed by the customer agreement.
As I informed your representative, Electra, on November 1, the customer service practices of U.S. Bank regarding their prepaid cards amount to a "no customer service" policy. Victims of fraudulent charges are given a customer service phone number that connects the caller to a customer service center in India which has no direct access to thedisputed charges unit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We the consumers are unable to discuss these fraudulent charges or the actions taken thereon with anyone in this country who has access to the paperwork concerning the fraudulent charges.in short, the entire system is designed to frustrate the customer into acceding to the fraudulent charges rather than disputing them.in my case, this has been exacerbated by my inability to access my daughter's account online for three days without any explanation from the bank.
I understand that many employers now use these prepaid cards to pay thewages of their employees. I suggest that the OCC examine the safeguards implemented by the issuers with respect to unauthorized charges before allowing widespread use of prepaid cards for employee wages."
Unbelievably, I still cannot access my daughter's account!!! In addition, US Bank refused my request to have the account statement faxed to me. Of course, we are closing her account when it is empty.
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