Consumer complaint received 2025-08-19 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card — Can't use card to make purchases
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
I called XXXX multiple times over the past few weeks, most recently twice on XX/XX/year>, seeking information on company policy for card usage. In my first call with XXXX, the representative denied me the information I was seeking, instead directing me to send an email to XXXX for m

y " complaint '' and ignoring my issue entirely. The second call went better, but I still don't really feel like I've gotten an answer to my issue. My call was in regards to a statement XXXX has issued : " As a global company, we follow the laws and regulations everywhere we do business. While we explicity prohibit illegal activity on our network, we are equally committed to protecting legal commerce. If the transaction is legal, our policy is to process the transaction. We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. '' In addition, they stated, " XXXX does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. When a legally operating merchant faces an elevated risk of illegal activity, we require enhanced safeguards for the banks supporting those merchants. '' I read that statement to the first representative to make sure we had the same understanding, then asked my questions. Since these statements, had Visas policies changed? I recently picked up a physical adult comic book. There is nothing illegal about the content in any way/shape/form. When I went to purchase a digital copy from a reputable retailer, it was unavailable with the retailer directing customers to issues they were facing with their payment processors and the credit card companies they work with, including XXXX. On my second call, the representative reassured me that, no, they had not changed policy recently.

I had follow-up questions. If the policy hadn't changed, why was this business -- and a few other mid-scale internet sellers I'm aware of -- being hit with the " enhanced safeguards ''? To my findings, there had been no reports of illegal content on any sort of wide scale being found on the site, however there were multiple reports of a radical organization harrassing XXXX into imposing restrictions without proof of wrongdoing.

I had also heard, through some of the same news reports, that there was some claim going around of a change due to " new government policy '', but can not find any governmental policy that would facilitate those changes, and as the second representative asserted, no policy changes had been made recently. What was the truth of this matter?

Finally I asked about what I found to be unfair and uneven application of policy. Why were these mid-tier sites with large independent XXXX XXXX XXXX being subjected to " enhanced safeguards '', while larger businesses like XXXX were not? In terms of content, there is overlap between what's being sold on these smaller sites and XXXX, but in my practical experience, XXXX is home to much more " illegal '' content in the form of copyright infringing works and misleading descriptions to trick consumers. I don't want adult content on XXXX to be lost, but I do think that if they get a pass, so should these smaller websites that don't seem to be doing anything different.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation