Consumer complaint received 2022-07-20
Company: Chime Financial Inc
State: MI
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:
On XX/XX/XXXX someone broke into my car and stole my sander, about {$1.00} in change that was in my cupholder, a XXXX  gift card with {$18.00} remaining balance, a prepaid card that belongs to me, and my XXXX which was signed into my XXXX and contained all kinds of personal information, passwords, my apps, my photos, financial info, etc. To make matters worse there was also XXXX unauthorized transactions that were processed on my checking account with Chime Bank XXXX XXXX ) totaling {$6500.00} all within a 3 hour and 39 minute time span. I have listed the time, date, and amount of each transaction below. 

XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX  XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX  XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX XXXXXX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX XXXXXX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$1000.00} XXXX XXXX XXXXXX/XX/XXXX at XXXX - {$500.00} XXXX XXXX  After discovering these transactions and seeing my checking account balance on my Chime app the same day on XX/XX/XXXX the very first thing I did was cancel my debit card and reported it as stolen. After that I called Chime to tell them what happened and report these unauthorized transactions. The Chime rep told me since the transactions just happened earlier that morning I would need to wait until the transactions were no longer pending and were settled and then I would need to dispute them from my Chime app. I kept an eye on them and on XX/XX/XXXX all of the transactions settled and the funds debited from my account. I created a dispute, but the chime app would only allow me to include XXXX transactions, so I selected XXXX of them and called chime to dispute the remaining transactions. Rather than making this all the same dispute, for some reason the transactions were split and submitted in XXXX separate disputes which I have outlined below. 

Dispute XXXX - filed through the chime app XX/XX/XXXX then {$4000.00} provisional credit was applied to my account on XX/XX/XXXX and then dispute was denied XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX credit was reversed on XXXX. Please see page 1 of the attached documents which is a copy of the email Chime sent me to let me know that they declined the dispute and will be reversing the provisional credit. 

I am furious with the outcome of this dispute for many reasons but the first one is that Chime did not adhere to Regulation E requirements in this dispute. Regulation E states Upon debiting a provisionally credited amount, the financial institution must notify the consumer of the date and amount of the debit and of the fact that the financial institution will honor ( without charge ) checks, drafts, or similar paper instruments payable to third parties and preauthorized debits for five business days after transmittal of the notice. The financial institution need honor only items that it would have paid if the provisionally credited funds had not been debited. Upon request from the consumer, the financial institution must promptly mail or deliver to the consumer copies of documents upon which it relied in making its determination ( 12 CFR 1005.11 ( d ) ( 2 ) ). As you can see on page 1 of the attached documents Chime did not tell me that it would honor those payments, instead they told me to make sure I have enough money in my account to pay back the credits and I also need to have enough money to pay for any other possible charges that are going to go to my account. 

I requested the documents containing the info that Chime relied on in their investigation on XX/XX/XXXX and they were not emailed to me until XX/XX/XXXX. I have attached the document and it is going to be page 2 in the attachments. 
- Chime stated that no PII or PIN changes during disputed time frame and no indication of phone compromise. My phone was with me safe the whole time but as I already have stated my ipad was stolen that contained all sorts of info, pictures, my icloud account and all my passwords, etc. As far as I know, the statement about no PIN changes is correct but that would only apply to point of sale transactions. Regulation E 12 CFR 1005.9 states that the electronic terminal receipts should include the type of transfer which Chime did not include, and the location of the terminal which Chime did not include. The type of transaction is vital to show if the PIN was even used or not. If this was not a point of sale transaction then I highly doubt that a PIN was needed, I have never personally had to enter my PIN except for point of sale purchases. If chime would have followed Regulation E then this would not need to be questioned. 
-The second reason Chime listed is because there was no hallmarks of account take over. That is true, I was able to log into my account and cancel my card but I am unsure why they are using that to justify denying my claim for unauthorized charges that were made on my debit card. 
- The third reason Chime listed is because they say the dollar amount of the disputed transaction is normal for my account. That is absolutely false. I have had my Chime account since XXXX and not one single time have I ever spent thousands of dollars back to back to back like what was done. There was {$6500.00} spent in 3 and a half hours, multiple transactions of {$1000.00} that are just a matter of minutes apart from each other and I have NEVER spent that much money that fast at the same place over and over. Chime gave an example of a single transaction I made a few days prior for {$3000.00} to XXXXXXXX and they are claiming that since I made that transaction it proves I authotized the charges in the disputte which is a ridiculous accusation with no valid reasoning behind it. 
- The fourth reason Chime listed is the disputed merchant is normal for me. Then they state there is an attached list of the transactions however they did not include any such list with prior transactions. So I will include them, please see page XXXX in the attachments. As you can see the transactions to this merchant that I did authorize are much much smaller, a lot of them are less than {$100.00}. If you compare that to the charges that were disputed they were clearly not normal spending behavior for me so again that is a false statement made only to deny my dispute. 
- The fifth reason Chime states is that the type of transaction is normal. They say I made a card not present transaction previously and use the same example from earlier where I added {$3000.00} to my XXXX XXXX. Chime says it is safe to assume that since I have made a card not present transaction in the past that the disputed transactions must be me because they are card not present transactions as well. That is complete nonsense, Im pretty sure everyone has made a card not present transaction at least once and it has nothing to do with the transactions in this dispute I dont understand why me adding money to my own XXXX XXXX multiple days before the disputed transactions happened would be considered as valid evidence that chime can use to deny my dispute. 
- The sixth reason Chime gives is because there is minimal denial codes found during the disputed timeframe, there was no attempts to exhaust the account including no insufficient funds errors code XXXX, no pin errors code XXXX, and no attempts to charge a reported stolen card code XX/XX/XXXX Ok first off when they say minimal denial codes that means there was in fact denial codes but they do not disclose how many. That is a subjective statement and this is a dispute for over 80 % of all the money I had to my name. I will not accept that for an answer. I want facts and real numbers. Definitive statements not subjective. Second, they say no attempts to exhaust the account and that is a flat out lie please see page XXXX of the attached documents which is an email from Chime during the disputed timeframe where Chime says that my card was declined because it has reached the allowed spending limit! The person who was charging those transactions absolutely did try to drain the account and that proves it. They spent as much as they possibly could and here Chime is claiming the complete opposite and using it as evidence they relied on to deny the dispute. There was no insufficient funds codes because my spending limit was reached and there was still a little bit of money in my account so obviously there will be no insufficient funds codes???? There was no pin error codes because it was card not present transactions according to what they just said in their fifth reason for denying my dispute and you dont need your pin number except on point of sale transactions that is completely irrelevant!! There were no attempts to charge a stolen card because they had already successfully drained it. Then I cancelled the card as soon as I discovered what had happened. I dont know what else I can do, its obvious that Chime is not here to help me. This has got to be illegal, how can they just lie like this when it is something that is so important? 
-The last reason they listed is there was a transaction adding funds at XXXX so they say that means I had control of my account and was aware of the transactions. That transaction they are talking about is from a money transfer that I had requested on XX/XX/XXXX and it got deposited on XX/XX/XXXX after the transactions in dispute. That deposit has absolutely nothing to do with the disputed transactions and I had no control of the timing it went into my account. 


Dispute XXXX - filed by phone at XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX and denied less than 9 hours later at XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX. I requested to be sent the documents used for making the decision on XX/XX/XXXX and Chime sent it to me on XX/XX/XXXX. I have attached a copy of the document in the included pdf, it is going to be page XXXX of the attached documents. 
-Chime says the first reason that they denied my dispute is because I told them I had possession of my card during the time these transactions were taking place. That would be a valid reason if these were point of sale transactions where my physical card was swiped but thats not the case so Im not sure why they are relying on that info to deny my claim. 
-Chime says the account was funded intermittently XXXX times throughout the disputed timeframe. Please see page 6 of the attached documents which shows my transactions for the account and you can see that is another incorrect statement made by Chime. As I mentioned previously, I received a visa money transfer at XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX but that was requested a day prior and I had no control over when that payment would post to my account. Chime states there is also a second transaction where I funded my account during the disputed timeframe, but as you can see there is not a second transaction where funds were added during the disputed timeframe. That is yet another false statement made by Chime which they relied on to deny my dispute. This is not how a financial institution should be carrying out investigations.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation