Consumer complaint received 2017-09-21
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: TX
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Transaction was not authorized

Complaint:
I have been a USAA member for 26 years ( my family, much longer ). I do a significant amount of business with USAA including checking, savings, home mortgage, home owner 's insurance, and 2 automobile policies. 

My wife and I live in XXXX. Back in XX/XX/XXXX-XX/XX/XXXX, we traveled to XXXX for a fun, short getaway. While staying at our hotel, my wife got a fraud alert from USAA about a sudden string of suspicious transactions from a merchant called XXXX. The transactions appeared to be for prepaid calling cards or something like that. Nobody in our household speaks Spanish and we have absolutely zero contacts in XXXX. Obviously not our charges. As we would expect of any bank, USAA was able to stop the pending charges and reverse the ones that had gone through. 

THEN, XXXX, we got a letter from USAA that although their " fraud analyst '' had concluded the other charges were indeed fraudulent, they somehow determined that ONE of the charges for {$20.00} was valid, and they were now deducting that from our checking account. This made NO sense to us -- why would they reverse all the other charges and not this one? 

Within a few days we got paper mail purporting to provide " matching information '' provided by the merchant that was purportedly provided as part of the transaction. However, the only " matching '' information I could find in the documents they sent us were things like name, address, and CVV number on the front of the card -- all the types of info that anyone with access to our personal belongings could have gotten. 

I spent another 2 hours after work today talking to various members of the USAA " executive resolution '' team. The executive resolution member I spoke with today was talking to the fraud department on the other line, and relayed info back to me that an additional piece of matching info on this ONE charge was some sort of " IP number. '' They could not explain what the " IP number '' meant and said it might be a smartphone or our personal computer. When I asked the phone rep to point me to that piece of info, she could not locate it. There is one page in the info they sent me with a very, very tiny blob of illegible text, that is so blurry I could not read it even with a magnifying glass. 

She transferred me back to the fraud department, who could not provide ANY info except for the merchant phone number. I tried calling the merchant and it was entirely in Spanish. We do not speak Spanish in our household and I refuse to try and it should be USAA covering me and let them contact the merchant if they want to. 

Although this was just a XXXX dollar charge, as my wife pointed out, what happens if next time it 's THOUSANDS of dollars? 

This has been so incredibly frustrating I can barely stand it. I hate to give up my membership and move my accounts to another bank, but I am prepared to do just that. I am now invested emotionally in this and I will not give up until I have resolution.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation