Consumer complaint received 2019-07-10
Company: DISCOVER BANK
State: MI
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:
XX/XX/XXXX I received a call from Discover saying my payment was late. It was news to me as I rarely used my credit card, and had it set to automatically pay the balance off every month if I had used it, so there should be no balance. I was told I owed {$7600.00} and I immediately told them it had to be fraud. They told me it had been being paid via phone instead of auto pay, and asked if a XXXX area code number was a number associated with the account. I told them no, there's no way that number should be associated with the account, but that I could tell them who committed the fraud because I did know the phone number. They sent me a year 's worth of statements to go through and call back and tell them which charges were fraudulent. There were only a few that were not fraudulent over the course of a whole year, and I did not dispute the few legitimate ones. I realized it had been my daughter, who had been living with me until she never came home in XX/XX/XXXX, who had been using the card. She had been taking care of some of my finances since XX/XX/XXXX as I had been in and out of the hospital for very serious ailments, and became XXXX and reliant on a XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX, as well as starting XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. There had been a few occasions on which I had authorized access to the card in XXXX, e.g. paying for my granddaughter 's dog to be neutered in XX/XX/XXXX. I did not realize that she had taken the card from my purse and used it to buy all manner of expensive things many times ( {$880.00} on XX/XX/XXXX, {$500.00} on XX/XX/XXXX, {$380.00} on XX/XX/XXXX, {$1300.00} on XX/XX/XXXX, a few among many charges disputed ) as she also retrieved the mail, and had her number put on the Discover account. The first I heard of this was in XX/XX/XXXX, after my daughter left and her phone service had been cut off. When I disputed these fraud charges, I asked if I had to file a police report, as getting out and around is harder for me and was told I did not have to. Discover sent a letter saying they wanted me to provide a written affidavit and to confirm which charges were fraudulent. I did this and sent it back, only to receive a statement from Discover saying that they believe it to not be fraud without further information. I called their fraud department and asked what further information they would like, and was told they required a police report, and until I did, their investigation was closed. I said I would get them the information they needed as soon as I could. I tried to get in contact with the county sheriff  's office multiple times, as they had reached out to me about a separate incident previously when I was in and out of the hospital in XX/XX/XXXX. My hospice social worker got me in touch with XXXX XXXX XXXX, who also tried to reach out to them multiple times, but no one ever followed back up with me. I eventually gave up on the sheriff 's office and contacted the local police department, and they had me file a report over the phone instead of in person. I gave Discover the police report number along with the officer 's name, the police department phone number, and address so that they could reopen the fraud case. A month later I received two letters, one saying that they accepted that it was fraud, and one saying that it was not, and got a call to clarify that they found it was not fraud because I did not contest that the small payments being made without my knowledge so that Discover would not call my landline phone and alert me to this activity were also fraud. I have been making payments this entire time so as not to ruin my credit report, but it has been very eye opening to see how people do not seem to care at all if you are a victim of fraud by a family member that you previously trusted.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation