Consumer complaint received 2023-03-22
Company: Block, Inc.
State: OH
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
XX/XX/2023 {$220.00} There was no merchant. I was attempting to purchase an item through the XXXX platform. The seller never shipped the item, and then contacted me asking me to conduct the purchase outside of XXXX. According to them, they needed to use Cashapp as a payment provider and XXXX did not have that option. So, they gave me their facebook info and through messenger they gave me their cashapp information. We communicated through messenger about the price of the item they were allegedly selling, I paid them for it and they just kept the money. Then they kept asking for more and more money ( as evidenced with the submitted screenshots through messenger ) I contacted cashapp and reported that they scammed me, to which the reply was well.. youre out of luck, unlike paypal and any other money transfer system out there basically, we have no way of stopping a transfer or reversing it. Just ask them for the money back But lets me real here, how often does someone steal money from you and give it back? Never. 

But to humor them, I requested a refund from the scammer, which of course was denied. The scammer also put me on ignore and blocked me on messenger so that I couldnt contact them any more. And as you can see through my transaction history the money has never been returned, and I have never and will never receive the item. So I turned to you begging for help getting my stolen money back. And the answer was no errors occurred. Yes, they did. I was a victim of a scam/fraud and had {$220.00} stolen from me. This is no different than if I bought something online from a supposedly reputable website and they just stole the money and never sent me the item, if that had happened a bank/ money transfer service is suppose to step in and perform a chargeback or whatever to help the victim get the money back. But apparently not this time? I could have just said that the person stole my phone and used it to send themselves money etc and then probably gotten the money back right away but I wanted to be honest with you guys and tell you I bought something from someone and they never sent it and refused to return the money. Because I hoped that with not only being a victim of fraud/scam but being completely honest, you would be able/willing to actually help. Since you 100 % have the means to do so. You know exactly where the money was withdrawn to. Cashapp, and if you communicate with them they can provide you with the information they have about the scammer, like her account info which is obviously linked to a bank account. She had to have somewhere to transfer the cash to, bank/debit card since you cant pay for stuff at the store with cashapp. And following that chain the $ could be pulled back from the account. Or at the very least, I could have been reimbursed for the charges by Cashapp themselves. Like most other services would have done. 


This whole event has been extremely distressing, and getting told sorry, youre on your own has been incredibly disheartening As this is the only time I have ever heard of in 44 years of my life from any bank/money transfer service where a mistake couldnt be fixed and left the victim bereft of any positive resolution.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation