Georgia R.

My teen daughter's bank card had a small fraudulent purchase with this merchant. She called their number and the guy was instantly denying and told my daughter it was a technical error.

My daughter not being as experienced in life accepted his 1st denial and when she told me what he said, I called him. All the red flags jumped out for me. And for sure enough, it was this illogical, unprofessional, over emotional repeated denial with multiple excuses. You know, the exact same things you hear with these social security scams.

When I spoke to him, I heard his very thick accent (not a racial thing, I am married to an immigrant, but many scams are happening from overseas now) and I kept asking how he could know what was going on with this transaction without even knowing any info about the transaction. No date of transaction, no name, no last digits of the card we requested at this point. Literally not 1 single bit of info asked about the transaction. He just claimed it was a technical error and then he claimed it wasn't in their system.

He kept putting me on fake hold saying he was looking up the account. He said he needed 5 minutes to look into the account, but again, he didn't even have a phone number. I called from my cell phone. He had literally no piece of info about the transaction. How could he be looking up the info without any info?

After he came back on the phone, he explained that he is the VP of the company and it became a heated argument between both of us, me being a momma bear, him going straight to deflection tactics. I then stated that I would put this business on blast to let everyone know. I stated that it made no sense that he could tell us the transaction was a "technical error".

I finally yelled because he was over talking me and I was asking him this basic common sense question about how he could answer anything without having basic info about the transaction.

Their toll free number called us on the other line while I was on the phone with him and that no matter how many ways he tried to dance around it, 2+2 will still equal 4 and I was onto his scam. (His phone number was different which we got from her bank statement.) There is more than 1 person in this and when I finally got him to start looking at basic transaction info, another person was heard in the room with him.

I asked, if this was a technical error, how did someone get the info into their merchant account? He put me on hold but didn't realize I was able to hear him. He was talking to another person. Then came back and said that someone in California with an unreal city, with a different card ending with a different set of the last 4 numbers used (how could different numbers of a card make it to her bank account?) used her card and it "must be them".

He said he would text the screenshots, but didn't ask for the number or email. But he sure sent the texts to my daughter's cell phone.

By the end of the fighting call, he finally heard me tell him the transaction was March 11,2022 and then he asked for the time of the transaction. Again, he gave a name, an unreal city in California and a different set of last 4 numbers on a card. It didn't match her card so how could that transaction be associated with the transaction charged to her card?

The bank statement shows the transaction was March 18,2022. We called him March 18,2022. It was not automatically caught and reversed as he stated.

We did alert the bank. And we are changing passwords and clearing phones and computers.

I believe an investigation into this company would be warranted and consumers should be on alert!

Of course I will file complaints to appropriate places in order to try to help prevent fraud.