Consumer complaint received 2018-02-17
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Card was charged for something you did not purchase with the card
Company: DISCOVER BANK (OH)

In XX/XX/XXXX, I discovered that a company submitted charges to my Discover Card account. These charges were never authorized and I have no idea how the company actually obtained my Discover Card account number. I contacted Discover Card to dispute the transactions, explaining that while I had an annual membership with a local franchise that had suddenly closed in XX/XX/XXXX, I had never had an agreement with the company that charged my card on both a monthly and annual basis. Additionally, even with the local franchise, I had never used my Discover Card or provided the account number to the franchise in any way. Discover Card ruled that some of the charges were legitimate while others were considered not legitimate since the company failed to provide documentation for half of the disputed transactions. I re-contacted Discover Card and explained the situation again, providing additional documentation including the contract that I had signed with the local franchise indicating that the agreement was ONLY with the local franchise and including a section that had been crossed out. The crossed out section was the one covering month-to-month charges. This was crossed out because I paid my membership on an annual basis. Additionally, the contract listed a visa card number that i had used to pay for my membership fees. 

Discover Card explained that the dispute would be escalated internally and that I would hear back within 72 business hours. Unfortunately, I did not hear back for more than a week so I called Discover Card again. I had the exact same conversation with the agent, walking through the contract that I had provided to Discover Card, as well as the other documentation that I had provided. I was assured that the evidence should be sufficient to overturn the illegitimate charges. Within a few hours, I received an email from Discover Card stating that my dispute was unfounded and that Discover Card sided with the company. I then contacted Discover Card again and asked how they could have failed to recognize that the contract proved that I had no relationship with the company placing charges on my account. The agent with whom I spoke reviewed my account and explained that the email had erroneously been sent and that Discover Card had finally recognized that we had a valid dispute. As a result, four months after I first raised the issue with Discover Card, they finally provided a permanent credit for almost {$900.00}. 

While I have finally received the credit, I am disturbed that I had to fight for so long to get the appropriate level of consideration. The company that had placed charges to my account only provided a billing statement with my name on it. It did not have my Discover card number, a signature, or anything else to indicate that the charges had been approved by me. If I had not found the contract from XX/XX/XXXX, I would have been charged over a thousand dollars which I would not have been able to recover. There is clearly a problem with the dispute process when a company can just say that the charges are authorized and be allowed to keep the funds. It was my understanding that companies actually have to prove that they have the right to access your card and apply charges to it. The company in question didn't have a signature or contract allowing them to do this. In fact, they did not appear to even have the full credit card number. As a result, they could have easily pulled my credit report ( based on my SSN ), found the last four digits of my account number, and then charged me based on that information.