Consumer complaint received 2025-04-17 00:00:00
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account — Transaction was not authorized
Company: Chime Financial Inc
State: MA

Complaint narrative:
Chime, licensed through XXXX XXXX  XXXX, lacks any administrative management over security and the related fraud that is implicitly permitted as a result. 

I received a text notification of a {$10.00} charge from an entity that I know I did not authorize to do so. 

As a result, I opened the Chime app and in under the span of a minute had XXXX the card for transactions physically or virtually and had initiated a conversation for help via live chat. 

Within a few texts in that exchange I was assured that the merchant had been blocked. Except immediately after being assured of this, another charge went through from the same fraudulent entity. This time for {$200.00}. 

The live chat agent ( not XXXX it assured me as well ) then indicated somebody would be calling me, and my phone rang almost immediately with Chime support on the other end and the agent further assured me that the fraud would be remedied. 

And as we were talking another transaction from the same fraudulent entity occurred, effectively draining the balance of the checking account. 

This occurred approximately a month ago, on Monday, XX/XX/XXXX between XXXX and XXXX, as the transactions were processed as pending despite a chime agents assurances that the fraudulent entity had been blocked from doing so prior to XXXX out of the XXXX transactions that took place. 

I was then required to dispute the criminal activity as a disputed transaction following the charges, and I remained on the phone for another hour trying to go through the process without being connected to any agent who could help me do that. Instead it turned into a game of testing my resolve by switching my call to agent after agent in the wrong department, never being connected to any right department for that specific service. 

I tried again in the following day or XXXX and spent hours to finally file a dispute claim with a person that had such a difficult time with the English language that they kept saying the antithesis of what they were intending to express to me. Discovered only by an intuition to repeat back to them the conflicting facts of their own misstated rhetoric. 

Shortly thereafter - within a couple of days - I was informed that the disputed transaction complaint by me had been denied and I was on the hook for the money that was stolen. I appealed their decision and was summarily notified of the same outcome for the appeal, and that the matter could not be revisited. 

In addition to my consternation over the fraudulent activities taking place in real time as both Chime representatives and I observed it without any agency on either part being empowered with the appropriate abilities to interfere and cease the criminal charges : It now seems illogical in retrospect for an XXXX, in XXXX, while conducting private matters regarding domestic banking services - that I explicitly chose to be domestic only within the account settings, and to never be available for international transactions whatsoever - to then be forced to discuss any details of my private domestic banking activities ( including disregarding my vigilance to prevent any portion of my social security number being shared, or other vital identifying characteristics of my status as a citizen in XXXX being shared with any call centers or their unvetted and unaccountable employees in XXXX. 

These are high turnover jobs rife with the potential for abuse by any short term employees, possibly obtaining their positions strictly on the basis of posing as a member of a legitimate employer in order to surreptitiously collect the banking information and personal data from XXXX, just to take the stolen information and sell to coconspirators, or soon after starting quit the job using the stolen information from the safety of a scamming call center themselves. Call centers that provide the protection of being highly unlikely to suffer any legal repercussions coming to them from authorities in XXXX for the XXXX  conduct committed via their wire fraud. 

I have since been unable to pursue any matters with Chimes call center as a result of them asking that I verify my account by providing them a PIN code sent to me via text message. A text message that aside from a random pin number then reads a chime representative will never ask you to share this PIN number. 

At this point in my account of the situation, I realize what most reading this might be thinking : That I wasnt actually on the phone with Chime and that it was all scammers from the beginning. 

Indeed, this is a confusing situation given that the call centers for customer service and scammers tend to originate in the same uncontrolled business environment of XXXX. 

However in each of my interactions my calls were requested from within the Chime app, and even though my phone rang seconds later with the caller ID identifying them as the commonly listed phone number including the name Chime, I also know that caller id can be easily spoofed. 

Which leaves all customer support from call centers in XXXX suspicious and untrustworthy at the baseline of implementation of simple security measures that would save XXXX XXXX  of stolen XXXX  every year. 

And the lunacy has reached a point where the supposedly authorized agents also give suspiciously conflicting statements about maintaining security, while at the same time requesting verification of a persons identity and their account access by asking for a pin code via text that specifically states that it should never be shared with any person from Chime, or anyone else. 

Which I never did. Whether it could be a legit request ( or more likely not by simple logic ), XXXX just not taking the bait from these XXXX scammers and the lack of reliable security by their so-called authorized counterparts at questionably legitimate call centers. 

Which in my assessment have been negligently contracted by fly-by-night XXXX XXXX services attempting XXXX XXXX behind low budget tactics to thwart essential customer services. 

Instead their contrived attempts are apparently aimed to deny proper representation of basic customer protections are, by complicit condoning or explicit intent, have been allowed to invite further fraudulent activities against their American customers who end up footing the price of the malfeasance of their new age business model of stripping away the rights of customers who entrusted their savings to them. 

The simple answer : End all legal authorization for any call centers on foreign soil to be permitted to conduct any type of service related to the domestic banking services of XXXX XXXX immediately. 

And doing so would reduce the amount of fraud, related claims, complaints, and the hefty financial burden on taxpayers affected by it all. It would also have a profound impact on exponentially reducing the future workload for the now strained services of the CFPB. 

The only reasons not to are a furtherance of complicity to aid and abet foreign nationals to commit crimes against Americans without ever setting foot on our shores.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation