Consumer complaint received 2022-01-27
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
State: FL
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement
Sub-issue: Card was charged for something you did not purchase with the card

Complaint:
I rented a car with XXXX XXXX ( official XXXX company name is XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX ) to do a one-way road trip from XXXX to XXXX XXXX XXXX from XX/XX/XXXX to XX/XX/2021. Per my booking with XXXX, and as reflected on my signed, legally-binding rental contract with XXXX based on that booking, there was no one-way fee levied for this rental. I paid the rental costs and insurance in full before taking the car on XX/XX/XXXX, and XXXX issued me an invoice to this effect. When I returned the car to the XXXX office at XXXX XXXX XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX employees claimed a mistake had been made and that a one-way fee should have been assessed when I took out the car. They told me I could not leave the office until they spoke to their supervisor, and they physically barred me from leaving the premises. I was flying to XXXX in two hours for my Grandfathers XXXX birthday party taking place the next day, there was only one flight per day, and after half an hour of being held in XXXX office I was in danger of missing the flight. I finally told XXXX employees they werent allowed to hold me there, that the rental contract was the only legal document governing this rental, and that I had paid all costs per the contract in advance, as they could see. XXXX finally let me go, but refused to issue me a final invoice closing out the contract. I never received an invoice from XXXX by email or mail either. Later that day, after I left XXXX, a mysterious charge from XXXX for {$930.00} showed up on my credit card. Because I had no invoice, I did not know to what this charge corresponded. I called up XXXX XXXX, and in their broken XXXX they would not give me any explanation. The cost of renting the car for 17 days ( excluding the insurance ) was {$610.00}, so this charge was XXXX times the entire cost of the rental a huge sum. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I disputed the charge with Chase as being improperly billed for a service not delivered. On XX/XX/XXXX, Chase wrote me a letter saying, We reviewed the information available and found that you either received the services or the merchant made them available for your use. We cant confirm youre due a credit because the services you purchased were received or available for use. We consider the charge valid based on our research Attached to Chase 's letter were documents from XXXX, including the final invoice, which XXXX had never shown me. The final invoice showed the disputed {$930.00} charge in question as being for a line item called Delivery. [ Note : all invoiced amounts are denominated in XXXX XXXX. {$930.00} is the credit card conversion to XXXX dollars ]. Subtracting this charge for " Delivery, '' the final invoice adds up to the same amount as the initial invoice, which XXXX also provided to Chase. XXXX also provided Chase a copy of the credit card payment receipt for the charge, and the signature block was ( of course ) empty because XXXX charged my card without my knowledge or consent after I had left XXXX. Please note that the security deposit I paid when taking out the car ( XXXX pesos ) was returned to me at the end of the rental. The documents XXXX provided to Chase made clear that I did not sign for this charge of {$930.00} and that it was entirely separate and additional to the security deposit. 

It was quickly obvious that Chase 's dispute resolution department had failed to do the most basic due diligence, thereby allowing XXXX XXXX, a foreign merchant, to keep {$930.00} of my money for a service not agreed or provided. As described, the merchant had provided Chase all the necessary information in this first review to determine that this {$930.00} was a billing error and that no service was agreed to or provided by the merchant for this charge. First, Chase 's investigators should have quickly realized that the " Delivery '' line item on the final invoice was the only cost in XXXX pesos large enough to equal {$930.00}. The other charges were not nearly large enough to add up to {$930.00}. Even if Chase 's investigators did not notice this, XXXX provided Chase both the initial invoice and the final invoice, so Chase should have quickly understood that the " Delivery '' charge was the difference between the two, and hence constituted the disputed charge in question. Next, Chase should have done three things : first, asked the merchant what " Delivery '' means ; second, asked the merchant where in the signed contract a service relating to " Delivery '' is written down and agreed to, or to otherwise provide proof that I had agreed to such a service and that it was provided to me ; and third, asked the merchant to explain why the receipt for {$930.00} was not signed by me, the customer. Chase did none of these most basic of steps. Instead, without doing this most basic of due diligence, Chase wrote me, " We reviewed the information available and found that you either received the services or the merchant made them available for your use. '' I called Chases dispute resolution office the same day I received the letter, XX/XX/XXXX, to report that Chase had made a grievous mistake, and explained the situation in detail. The Chase employee with whom I spoke told me to immediately email a special email address, XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I sent a very detailed email to this email address in which I identified the disputed charge and explained in detail how this Delivery charge ( what I assume was XXXX attempt to unlawfully levy on me a one-way fee ) was not present in the legally-binding rental car contract, or the XXXX  booking on which it was based. In my email, I explained clearly that the Delivery line item corresponded to the disputed charge of {$930.00} and that this charge clearly was not present in the rental contract. Following my email, chase re-opened the dispute. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, Chase sent me another letter saying, After reviewing the information that we recently received from you, we found no evidence of a billing error based on our research and the information available to us. The charge will remain on your account The same day, XX/XX/XXXX, I called Chases Dispute Resolution team again to explain they had made a mistake and to ask why the charge was upheld. The Chase agent told me that it was upheld because the total invoice amount equals the two charges XXXX levied on you. I explained to him that an invoice is not proof of anything an amount invoiced to a customer must be supported by a signed credit card receipt and/or a legally-binding contract showing that the invoiced service or good was agreed to and/or proof a service was delivered as agreed. 

I asked the agent if he even understood which charge was in dispute, and he could not tell me. It was obvious that despite my explaining the charge in dispute in detail in my email to Chase, the Chase investigator still had not understood that the Delivery line item on the final invoice is what corresponded to the disputed charge of {$930.00}. As noted, all the line items on the invoice are denominated in XXXX pesos without the taxes added ( the tax was added to the sum total of the line items at the bottom of the invoice ), so if someone does not take the time to look at the invoice carefully, they will not understand which charge corresponds to {$930.00}. The Chase agent repeated that all Chase looks at in its dispute resolution investigations is the invoice, and that in this case the total invoice amount in pesos matched the sum of the merchants two charges to me the disputed amount plus the initial charge when I paid the car and insurance upon taking out the car. He told me nothing else needed to be considered, the case was closed, and that I needed to move on and stop looking backwards. I requested to speak to a supervisor, and he told me Chases disputes department had no supervisors. 

I called Chases Dispute Resolution team again the next day ( XX/XX/XXXX ) to request a supervisor, and this time I was connected to one. After hearing me explain everything, the supervisor told me she was ordering an internal review to determine if Chase made any mistakes in its investigation. I was told Chase would contact me by phone with the outcome of the review. On XX/XX/XXXX, I called Chases dispute team to ask about the outcome of the review. I was told that a Chase investigator had reviewed the case and determined that the service relating to the disputed amount was included in the contract. This is the first time Chase had told me explicitly that they had based their finding on the service being present in the rental contract. I requested that the Chase agent tell me where in the rental contract any service relating to Delivery could be found, and the Chase agent could not provide me an answer. I then asked her to explain what " Delivery '' means -- what service does this word refer to? Again, she could not tell me what it means. How could Chase confirm that this service was provided to me was in the rental contract if they do not even know what it is? Additionally, the investigators notes, as read to me over the phone by the supervisor, made no reference to the line item Delivery on the final invoice, and the Chase supervisor once again did not seem to understand that this was the service that related to the disputed charge. It was clear that Chase still, after all my emails and calls, did not even understand which line item on the invoice related to the disputed charge. 

In sum : Chase did not due the most basic due diligence to 1 ) identify the service associated with the disputed charge in question, 2 ) Ensure such a service was in the rental contract, and 3 ) have the merchant explain what this " Delivery '' means and prove that it was in the contract or was otherwise agreed to with me and provided. Rather, despite my repeated attempts to resolve this issue in good faith with Chase, Chase has repeatedly used spurious justifications for upholding this charge, justifications which fail to acknowledge the clear fact at the center of this case : that no Delivery service, or any service relating to delivering a car or to a one-way fee, exists in the signed rental contract. The closest the rental contract gets to suggesting such a charge may be valid is at the bottom left of the rental contract, which says that a " Possible Additional Charge '' is a " drop off different city per kilometer. [ The bad XXXX is XXXX, not mine - this is word-for-word from the contract ]. However, as I noted to Chase, per the Sixth clause on the back of the contract this only applies if the renter drops the car off in a different location than already agreed in the contract. The wording is, " In case a vehicle is not returned in the place specified in this contract, the LESSEE shall [ pay ] justified expenses evidenced and used for the above-mentioned transfer. '' But I did, of course, return the car to the exact location specified in the contract. 

On a personal note, I serve our country overseas, and this is why I have the Chase Reserve Card so that I know that if an unscrupulous foreign merchant charges my card without my knowledge for a service I never agreed to, Chases dispute department will protect me. Ive served our country in war zones including in XXXX, XXXX, where I was up until XX/XX/2021, when we evacuated our Embassy. This is how Chase treats Americans like me who are working overseas, either to protect our country or to strengthen commercial/cultural/political ties with foreign countries, and who got this card because they trusted that Chase would protect them if a foreign merchant mis-used their credit card, as XXXX XXXX did with mine. I warned Chases dispute department repeatedly that if they did not fix their initial mistake and remove this charge, I would report this case to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and their agents simply did not care. 

Finally, if this disputed amount of not credited back to my Chase account, I am publishing this narrative publicly online and also on Chase 's XXXX and XXXX. I also want Chase to know that I have authorized CFPB to publish this narrative on consumerfinance.gov to warn others.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation