Consumer complaint received 2023-05-11
Company: CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: NY
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Can't use card to make purchases

Complaint:
On XX/XX/XXXX at approximately XXXX XXXX, my Capital One Venture X card was placed in restricted status freezing the use of the card for all 5 users ( 1 primary 4 supplemental ) of the account pending that I ( as primary ) contact capital one. 

My complaint is focused on the restriction/unlock process which is disproportionate and unfair to the customer in several aspects : 1. Capital One while staffing its customer service line 24/7 ( and states as such in their restriction notification ) does NOT staff its fraud department in a similar manner. If you call outside of the frauds departments office hours ( which are not declared ) you have to wait until the next business day. 

2. When calling the Fraud department, the agent follows a standard script which tells customers you that it will take " 7-10 days '' to remove the restriction on what is being sold as a Travel focused credit card product where users are likely to be overseas and critically reliant on use of the card. The only way to accelerate this timeline is to request speaking with a fraud supervisor -- something cap1 does not share to the customer. In short, the people cap1 encourages customers to contact are not empowered to help. 

3. In my particular case, I requested escalation to a fraud supervisor who told me that " their systems were down '' and I'd have to call back in " 2-4hrs '' as my account could not be accessed. In short Cap1 enterprise/production systems have very little business resiliency when it comes to their fraud operations. In my view this is a critical/material audit failure of multiple regulatory requirements associated wtih disaster recovery/business continuity. For 2-4 hrs to be part of a responders call script, the customer systems are not capable of even " two '' 9 availability. 

4. When calling back ( Cap1 makes no effort to arrange to contact you ), you are told only a valid state ID can be presented to unlock your account -- federal ID such as valid US passports are not accepted because whatever authentication system Cap1 uses does not know how to process them/Cap1 is not paying for that feature set. 

a ) cap1 makes no mention of how this data will be used, retained or what third party they are passing the information on to when requesting the submittal via a link sent to the customer through email. There is no ability for the user to communicate with cap1 secure messaging via cap1 's own website.

b ) cap1 offers no tech assistance in having their own cap1 app scan/upload the id. However if the id is not scanned/photo 'd in a way clear enough for the authentication system to validate, the account can be permanently suspended with no recourse. 

I am writing because while I was able to get my account unlocked, this process caused tremendous stress to my family who were travelling overseas and relying on a fair and transparent fraud monitoring process from Capital One in the event there were concerns about our purchases. To note : there is *nothing* I/my family can do to prevent this from happening again -- as there was no fraud and cap1 refuses to provide information as to what triggered the restriction other than a generic reference to an airfare purchase using capital one 's own travel portal website.

5. After processing my submitted id

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation