Consumer complaint received 2019-03-11
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: CA
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:
This is regarding my Wells Fargo credit card account that was fraudulently used from approximately XXXX till XX/XX/XXXX. When I found out about the fraudulent charges, I had filed a claim with Wells Fargo, but the claim was denied due to the following reasons : 1. I have made multiple payments over the course of the few months while the fraudulent activity was ongoing. 
2. I have stated that my wife has dealt with this merchant before in the past. 
3. I have dealt with this merchant in the past on another Wells Fargo account associated with me. 

These transactions are NOT made by me, nor my wife, nor anyone authorized by me. 
XXXX / XXXX is a very big company, that does businesses in many areas, including online shopping, mobile wallet payment service, food delivery service, grocery delivery, etc.. They are somewhat like the XXXX, particularly XXXX, equivalent of XXXX / XXXX, so it is not surprising for anyone that has lived in XXXX, or XXXX in general, to have shopped there before. Please refer to my attached documents for the list of transactions and also my appeal letter as well. 

I was initially under the impression that these purchases could have been made by my wife, as she was in XXXX during some of the months in XXXX, and therefore it isnt out of the ordinary to assume so, based on the fact of how prevalent this merchant is in XXXX, and also due to the fact that she had shopped at this merchant before. As such, Ive made many payments to the card throughout the months, and did not report these transactions as fraudulent. 

The rationale behind making so many payments are mostly due to 2 reasons : My 0 % APR period is over, so I often make multiple payments to cards that do charge interests, which includes my Wells Fargo cards. Payments to credit cards are often made whenever I have readily available excess funds, either from deposits or from income, etc. My XXXX credit cards also had over 10-20 payments made within a month sometimes. The reasoning is to pay down the cards whenever possible, to reduce both balance and also interest fees. 

Also, sometimes the card seemed to be maxed out, and because I assumed the card was being used by my wife, I made additional payments to increase available credit, so that she can use the card and make additional charges, if the need arises. 

However, as I was going through our statements with my wife, I eventually found out that these transactions are NOT done by her. She did NOT use my Wells Fargo card for any of her shopping on XXXX / XXXX / XXXX. She had been using her own personal XXXX credit card for any transactions related to this merchant. 

These transactions are NOT made on my wifes XXXX account either. If you would like, I can provide you with the username and password where you can login to the account to verify if we had made those purchases. I personally do NOT have a XXXX account myself. 

As such, these transactions are NOT carried out by me, nor my wife, nor anyone authorized by me. To reiterate, I did NOT authorize anyone to carry out these transactions, nor do I know who carried out these transactions, nor did I do these transactions. I nor my wife, have NOT received any benefits, directly or indirectly, from these transactions as well. 

On top of that, I have tried to file a police report with the XXXX Police Department. However, because I am currently overseas, I am unable to do so as they require police reports with regards to such matters be made in person at the police station. I will however, be making the report in person at the XXXX Police Department once I do return back to the U.S.. Alternatively, if this would be ok, I can also file a police report in XXXX as well, as this is where I am right now. 

In my opinion, it is unfair to deny my claim simply because we had dealt with this merchant before. As an example for illustrative purposes, Ive dealt with XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX, and XXXX before as well. Does this mean that I am going to be responsible for any and every fraudulent activity that occurs at any of the above mentioned merchants simply because Ive shopped there and dealt with them before? Does this mean that I am only covered for fraudulent activity that occurred with merchants that I have never dealt with in the past? 

And because my wife had shopped at this merchant before, and being that we were in XXXX during parts of XXXX, and my wife was also in XXXX on her own without me during parts of XXXX, where this merchant pretty much dominates the whole online shopping market, it isnt out of the ordinary for me to think that the transactions were done by my wife. And also due to the fact that we have been traveling for an extended period of time in XXXX, I did not have as much free time to sit down and review my statements with my wife until we could finally have some free time to sit together and review everything. 

Our contacts thus far to this merchant has not been of any use. After speaking to a Wells Fargo representative on XXXX XX/XX/XXXX, I had attempted to contact the merchant again. My wife had tried contacting the merchant as well. This is a summary of my contacts with the merchant : Merchant has not been able to help much at all, if any. 
Merchant is a huge company, so during my attempts to contact them, Ive been transferred around to several different departments who kept saying that another department is in charge of such issues, such as the international department should be the department in charge of the account, and then someone else would tell us that instead of them, we should be talking finance department, etc. etc. In summary, each attempt to contact them has wasted a lot of time and effort to reach the correct department that is supposed to be able to or willing to help. 
Merchant has refused to disclose / been unable to disclose any particulars of the charges, including the address where the orders were shipped to, email address associated with the orders, etc. 
Merchant recommended that I contact my bank instead. 

I hope that Wells Fargo can investigate these transactions and come up with a fair conclusion. It is extremely unfair to put the burden of these transactions on me simply because my wife had shopped at this merchant in the past. While I understand that I should have realized and reported the fraud much earlier, and that certainly would have made things much easier and better, however I was traveling extensively at that time and didnt have a good opportunity to sit down and review things with my wife. 

If you need to reach me, please kindly reach me at XXXX, or through email at XXXX. I am still currently traveling overseas, so I am unable to receive any physical mail correspondence.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation