Consumer complaint received 2023-12-11
Company: Block, Inc.
State: FL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem

Complaint:
There were a number of small repeating unauthorized transactions that were made in my cash app ( square Square , Inc ) account for the following amounts : 50 transactions for {$4.00}, 1 transaction for {$1.00}, 3 transactions for {$1.00}, 2 transactions for {$1.00}, 2 transactions for {$1.00}, and 2 transactions for {$1.00} between XXXXXXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX eastern time on XXXX  XX/XX/2023. There were 60 total transactions of those amounts repeated. I don't have any details about how the transactions were made, but someone had somehow gotten a hold of my cash app debit card information. 

I did some research online and noticed that this is happening to many people and unfortunately, many of them are not receiving any assistance from the merchants or their banks/payment platforms. 

The payments were made with a description included that showed XXXX followed by a name. The names in the descriptions were " XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX, '' " XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX, '' " XXXX XXXX XXXX. '' Some were declined after cash app noticed fraudulent activity, but 60 went through, and the total taken was {$220.00}. 

I was advised to report my cash card and contact the merchant. I contacted XXXX directly but was not able to really get any concrete answers or assistance. 

I proceeded to start a dispute with cash app, but cash app 's dispute interface using the app are not optimized for a large number of transactions, and although a dispute was created for one transaction, I could not dispute all transactions using the app. I called in, and someone was able to assist with me in creating a dispute for all of the transactions. 

Cash app had not communicated with me properly throughout this process and the dispute team could not be reached over the phone but through email only. They did not respond to my emails and made decisions they said were final without consulting with me. Cash app closed my cash card during the dispute process even though I had already reported my card and was awaiting the new one. I lost access to my cash card because of this, and I couldn't use the new card that was sent to me. I was asked to verify my identity, and the app failed to work when I was taking a picture to verify my identity. This was the reason they gave for closing my cash card and I was able to verify my identity through the app on a second attempt, but the decision to close my cash card access was something that they said could not be reversed. I still have the ability to send and receive money through the app, but I'm now limited in my usage of cash app because of that. 

I eventually received a confirmation that my dispute was resolved on XX/XX/2023, but I was only given a refund for one {$4.00} transaction. The other 49 transactions for {$4.00} were not refunded, and the remaining 10 transactions of lower amounts were also not refunded. 

I called again and received an email list of all the disputed transactions without explaining the reasoning behind their decision to not refund me for all the unauthorized transactions in the dispute. Logically, if I was able to win the dispute for one {$4.00} transaction, then I should at least also receive a refund for all of the other 49 {$4.00} transactions that were clearly unauthorized as well and within minutes of each other. In addition, I should receive a refund for the XXXX other related small transactions that occurred near the same time. 

I called once more, and someone helped me follow up with the dispute for those transactions again which was a very long and cumbersome process, but now I'm still awaiting a decision on the disputes. Serious changes need to be made to these processes for cash app and other similar products because the consumers and victims are the ones that suffer the most. Situations like this lead to growing distrust in cash app and cause people to hesitate to use the service. I'm hoping that somehow I will be able to get this resolved and be compensated for every XXXX that was stolen from me. I fear that my dispute will not be investigated properly and I will lose my hard-earned money without proper compensation.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation