Consumer complaint received 2023-04-08
Company: HUNTINGTON NATIONAL BANK, THE
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:
On XX/XX/XXXX, my daughter received an alert via text message on her phone about suspicious activity on the Huntington Bank credit card, which was in both our names. This was a new card only issued out a week prior to the alert. She called the card company back on that day and told them that the online gambling purchases on the card were not ours. She told them to close the account because those were fraudulent charges, which the card company did that day and issued new cards. At that time the card had been maxed out.

About 5 weeks after that, in the beginning of XXXX, my joint account with my wife and my individual account was frozen. When my wife realized that, she called the bank and they told her she needed to speak with someone at the bank. She did so to find out that a credit card in my name, was pass due. My wife called me to come to the bank. I went to the bank and told them that I had no outstanding credit card, not realizing they were speaking of the card that was supposedly being investigated for the fraud in XXXX. We were told by the bank we needed to file a police report, which we did that same day. We were told by the bank rep that we would be contacted by mail when there was a resolution or if they needed anymore information. I had periodically been speaking with the rep asking if she had heard anything, and she told us we needed to wait to hear from them. The fraud department never spoke to us directly since this all began. We were speaking through third parties either through the bank or customer service with very little information. About a few months passed when I finally asked the bank rep if she knew anything new because we hadn't heard anything, she told us it didn't look like it was going in our favor. When we asked why she said we should be hearing from the fraud department. At this point I was stunned and asked if there were copies of the credit card statement I could have, because I didn't even know what card was in question. When I got the statements, I realized this was the card that my daughter had already filed a fraud investigation on in XXXX, XXXX that they obviously never took care of at that time. We tried numerous times, through customer service, after that to have the fraud department contact us because the rep at the bank told us there was nothing more they could do on their end, but the fraud department never got back with us. Then in XXXX we received a recovery letter from the XXXX card company that we owed over {$15000.00}. We called and found out that the case was closed on XX/XX/XXXX, and yet we never received any communication at all letting us know. Fed up, I contacted the XXXX and within days we got a call from a customer advocate from the bank who got the investigation reopened because she saw our track record prior to the incident. After much back and fourth they concluded that because on XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX there was a transaction for the same site on my bank account and so they concluded that the transactions on the credit card were mine. My last and final question to the customer advocate on XX/XX/XXXX was, on XX/XX/XXXX when my daughter told them that they were not our charges, did the fraud department do any investigation on the charges? She replied, she didn't believe so. I told the customer advocate, if they would have done their job and investigated those fraudulent transactions at the time, we wouldn't be going through this now, but almost a year later, when they can no longer retrieve the charges on the card, they are deeming it our responsibility. 
I would just like to add that I have been dealing with having my credit cards hacked into by these online gambling sites and for others to be weary of them. 
Also, Huntington Bank is the worse bank in my experience when dealing with issues of fraud, because you are not able to speak with anyone in the fraud department directly. I have had this happen to many of my credit cards and have never had to pay for one of these online gambling transactions, they were all resolved.

This has ruined my credit score, which prior to this issue was over XXXX.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation