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So there's a mysterious $140 charge on my account that I didn't make, leaving me with a negative balance. The chase website is fucking useless, and I can't seem to get through to any human on the phone (or doubt that I can this time of night). Any suggestions what to do? Should I wait until the bank opens in the morning? I'd prefer to take some kind of action NOW if I can.

I JUST got a new debit card two months ago. I've hardly used it. I find it hard to believe somebody could have stolen the number already. I'm hoping this is simply some kind of glitch, but I'm still freaking out. I'm not sure if I can fall asleep after this, but lack of sleep is NOT helping.

Do you know where the charge was made? Was it a store? An ATM? If it's a store of any kind, you can try going there and ask who made the transaction. I'm sure they keep logs or something. Do you remember giving your numbers to anybody? The bank is probably your best bet, though. I'm not sure if they refund, but you can always try.

It was from a Kohl's, or rather a KOHLS DEPT STORE 8005645740 BOC 1249. I've never given my number to anybody, like I said I've hardly had a chance to use it myself. The only people who I've used it with is GoDaddy, Eve Online, my local Target, a Del Taco, and the ATM at my own bank (which I make a habit of checking for card-reading devices first)

The transaction is still "pending," plus it was for more than my account even had, so hopefully it simply isn't going to go through. But it happened just before my monthly GoDaddy payment, so chances are my card will be locked down for a little while and my website will get shut down

Sadly, I had my CC replace already cause someone in Detroit clone my card and try to charge stuff, but luckily my card company has good monitoring system and block it (I never been to Detroit) The only thing I can think of doing right now is report your card stolen and get a new one AND file a refund for the charges you didn't make. Sadly, that will take months.

There should be a number to call on the card. These places are usually open 24/7 for fraud. Yes, when you call it'll probably invalidate your card but that's not a bad thing.

The store number indicates that the charges were made in Napa, CA so if you haven't been to anywhere close to Sacramento then this charge is probably fraud. Call the bank NOW!

If you need help with the web site for the month let me know. I can help with that.

What Dave said, keep calling till you get a person, these places are 24/7.
Here's the Chase Fraud webpage: https://www.chase.com/index.jsp?pg_name=ccpmapp/privacy_security/fraud/page/report_fraud
And the number for their fraud division for Chase Deposit (Checking and Savings) Customers: 1-800-935-9935 and for Credit Card Customers (Personal) it's 1-800-436-7927.
Good luck man, I'm sure they will help you out.

That's the exact same number on my card, which isn't letting me get to a person. I'm getting ready to leave right now, I plan on being at the bank when it opens.

Yeah, just talk to a bank teller, they'll get it sorted out. You may have to sign a few forms, basically to legally state that you are certain those withdrawls aren't yours.

I've had this happen to me three or four times since moving to Oakville. There's a pretty big Pin pad replacement racket here.
First couple of times the bank red flagged my card and cancelled it before they could actually take anything.
Last time they replaced one of the pin pads in the college cafeteria, and got a hold of hundreds of students' accounts. I had $400 taken out in two seperate withdrawls, in another city. The bank cancelled my card and gave me back my money. No fuss.

I had something similar happen with a podiatrists office in Greensboro, turns out that someone had manually punched in an incorrect card number manually, they had it corrected in a few hours. We still changed cards, nothing's happened since.

Happened to me just the other day. Got a call that my bank had cancelled my debit card and to call them immediately. I asked where the card was flagged but I was told they couldn't tell me but I could contact my local police department for suspicious locations.

Thanks assholes.

My bank caught one that was used in a Walmart 800 miles away. It just sucked to find out by not being able to buy lunch on it.

I talk gibberish to the automated voices until I get a real person. It always works. "For ____ press 1, for _____, press 2." ".....BWAALAALALAAA!" "....Please hold." Try it! I hope you get to the bottom of it.

Just scream operator until there is an operator there.

Mine was used once in Tennessee at a Wal*Mart. Funny since I wasn't there, huh?

The bank reversed the charges but the card was as good as useless.

Finally managed to get ahold of somebody by just pressing through the menu randomly (I was caring less and less who it connected me too), apparently the transaction was an attempted use of a check. He said since it was pending, they couldn't dispute it yet, and it would probably just bounce and go away so I should "just wait it out and see what happens." That hardly sounds like reasonable advice, considering the fact that somebody is forging checks for my account.

If they charge me a fee for a bounced check for this I'm so quitting chase.

Yeah bounced checked don't usually "go away". I'd go to the local branch and speak with the manager.

Don't wait it out. If someone is forging checks, close your account and get a new one. More will probably come through.

Yeah, go in in person and talk to someone face to face. Unless you have the worst bank in the world, they'll fix it. I've never had problems with this with my bank, despite my card number being stolen several times.

That's weird that its a cheque though, I've never had that particular type of fraud.

Sometimes it's the bank's error. When the checks come through their system, they can be encoded wrong and take money from the wrong account. I saw that happen a few times when I was a teller.

Quick post since I'm on iPhone. Call the 800 number that's shows up on ur card. Where it says that kohls depth store 800xxxxxxx call that number to het ahold of kohls see if they can reverse the charge

Frank said:

Happened to me just the other day. Got a call that my bank had cancelled my debit card and to call them immediately. I asked where the card was flagged but I was told they couldn't tell me but I could contact my local police department for suspicious locations.

Thanks assholes.

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Lolwut? *chuckles*

Had something similar happen, except someone had been going through my mail, lifted my phone number and account info for one of my bills, then pretended to be a bill collector. DAMNED near worked, too. When I talked to my sergeant about it, he told me I couldn't investigate it myself. Shyeah! Right!

Officer_Charon;392476][QUOTE=Frank said:

Happened to me just the other day. Got a call that my bank had cancelled my debit card and to call them immediately. I asked where the card was flagged but I was told they couldn't tell me but I could contact my local police department for suspicious locations.

Thanks assholes.

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Lolwut? *chuckles*

Had something similar happen, except someone had been going through my mail, lifted my phone number and account info for one of my bills, then pretended to be a bill collector. DAMNED near worked, too. When I talked to my sergeant about it, he told me I couldn't investigate it myself. Shyeah! Right![/QUOTE]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny. The not funny part is we have no complaints of any local card duping or fraudulent withdrawals.

It's been 6 or 7 years, but I used to work at Chase in their Service Line department (normal customer service for checking/savings). For the menu, as far as I know, you can press *0 to bypass the menu and get to someone. You might have to do it twice. It should dump you into that Service Line group (they might call it something else now). Have them transfer you to a fraud specialist. If they refuse, escalate, though remain calm. They had an extremely high turnover rate when I worked there and I can only imagine it's worse now.

Or, check the Chase website, find the number for the Fraud department and call them directly. My grandmother has chase and had to dispute some charges. I received no pushback when i called. Don't freak out when you call. It's not the rep's fault and they will far more willing to help out a calm customer. If something doesn't seem right (like telling you to contact the police department or wait for the charge to go through), escalate. During a fraud investigation, your account can be credited with goodwill funds for the fraudulent amount while the investigation takes place (at least when I called for my grandmother). If the investigation is in your favor, your account remains unchanged. If they determine there is no fraud, your account is debited the goodwill funds you were credited.

I know you're upset, but refrain from raising your voice or taking it out on the rep, even if they seem incompetent. Calmly ask to speak to a manager and insist on the escalation if the rep tries to further assist. Once you get the manager, again, calmly explain the situation and what the previous rep told you. Let them know it's unacceptable for you to be out of the whatever funds were in your account and have to deal with the NSF fee that your account will be hit with when the check bounces, if it bounces (as Chase has a habit of approving transations resulting in a small negative balance).

GAH! It happened AGAIN! My balance is now -$200. And chase's response is still the same: they're not going to do anything until the transaction is complete, at which point I can dispute it. Fuck you, Chase. Fuck. You. As soon as this is cleared up I'm getting my money (if I get it back) the fuck out of there.

Tell them if they can't close the account until it gets cleared up then lock the account so no more transactions can go through. You'll probably see even more come through over the next week.

Fraud tel #s

Chase Deposit (Checking and Savings) Customers
1-800-935-9935 Chase Deposit (Checking and Savings) Customers outside the U.S.
1-713-262-3300
Chase Premier Platinum Customers
1-888-262-4273 Mortgage Customers
1-800-848-9136
Credit Card Customers (Personal)
1-800-436-7927 Credit Card Customers (Business)
1-800-346-5538
Chase Auto Finance Retail/Loan Customers
1-800-336-6675

I don't know if anyone else here has had a similar experience, but when a similar thing happened to me, Capital One was freaking on it. It took less time to take care of than they said it would, and everyone was really polite and helpful. Maybe it's just the people at my branch, but I am always satisfied with their service and policies.

David said:

GAH! It happened AGAIN! My balance is now -$200. And chase's response is still the same: they're not going to do anything until the transaction is complete, at which point I can dispute it. Fuck you, Chase. Fuck. You. As soon as this is cleared up I'm getting my money (if I get it back) the fuck out of there.

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Submit your story to The Consumerist. If the blog posts it you'll shame Chase into giving you better customer support, and you'll get a lot of good ideas from the commenters there. Also, they've got instructions on how to send an "Executive Email Carpet Bomb", where you send a message to all the high-ups in a company, a tactic that's been known to get results.

Banks are evil, join a good credit union, they rock. Once you get this problem straightened out of course...good luck.

^My parents and bf both do that, and they love it.

So, a scan of one of the checks that were written showned up on my online statement. They look like legitimate checks, owned by a guy named Randy Thomas, only they have my routing number on them. Is it possible this was a big bank error, that maybe he got a set printed with a typo on it making them my number by mistake? A phone number is on the check, should I try calling him and asking him to stop, or should I just tell the bank all this and not contact the guy?

Call the cops and give them his info? Or will they even bother? I mean, hell if you have the guys information I would think they would act on that...

Go to the cops. More than likely the information on the checks is incorrect anyway or is that of a live person but not the person stealing your identity.

What they did was to spoof the check information onto checks by another guy and are using that identity as the fall guy. But on the off chance this guy is dumb enough to use his own information...

But yeah, you ALWAYS want the cops on this. You go there yourself or call and you are asking for trouble. Do not do this unless the police will be no help and tell you so.

Also call Chase and move up that representative ladder. What they are telling you is bullshit. Your account should be locked and thrown away by now.

If you aren't on the hook for any of the purchases, I wouldn't worry about contacting the cops. Give it all to the bank. Did you get the account closed yet?

He needs to go to the cops because there's forgery, identity theft and fraud happening just to name a few. The cops will be able to get more information out of the bank than he will. Take the screen shot of the cancelled check to the police along with a canceled check and tell them your story.

Not contacting the police is a huge mistake.

If he's not on the hook for any of it, I doubt they will do anything. Especially if it is in another state. They're not even using his checks or his name. The bank should return all the checks, and the merchant will have to collect the money. They can go to the police and report it if they want. Feel free to take it to the police though.

The main thing is to just get the account closed. There is no reason they can't close it even with pending transactions on it.

When this happened to me they kept it open for a time so that they could track where the guy was trying to use the checks. These guys sell the check images online so they might start popping up in other places. My checks (copied while going through the central mail hub in Chicago) showed up in California, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and a few other states. I ended up not paying anything but it did mess up my credit because it got reported to the credit companies. If I had a police report it would have been INFINITELY easier to get cleared up. Hell, that was 10 years ago and stuff still appears now and then on my credit reports!

It seems I finally got somebody competent on the phone. I called the claims department to add the transactions that have finished pending to my claim and also make sure they saw the scan of the check. The lady assured me I'd be getting all my money back, including the insufficient fund fees, and actually froze my account (the customer service lady at the physical bank gave me a look as if I had asked her to move a mountain and asked "How am I supposed to do that??" When I asked about freezing the account from any more of these popping up).

Still gonna be keeping an eye out for a new bank or credit union though. Unfortunately I can't afford any that will charge me any monthly fees.

I did a little retail, and I was handed a forged check. It was a real check but it was ran through a ink jet printer. I red flagged it, and the transaction went through anyway. My manager over rode my instincts. So some poor sap bought an expensive PC package and never got to use it.

Dave said:

When this happened to me they kept it open for a time so that they could track where the guy was trying to use the checks.

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I really don't see any need to do that, but I guess each bank is different. They still come in and try to hit your account even if it's closed. The bank keeps track of all that, leaving it open is just asking for trouble.

I guess opening a police report is probably a good idea. I'd still focus on getting everything squared away with the bank first.

David said:

Still gonna be keeping an eye out for a new bank or credit union though. Unfortunately I can't afford any that will charge me any monthly fees.

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You can get a free checking account at just about any bank now. Go with a small bank or a credit union, you'll get a lot better customer service.

David said:

It seems I finally got somebody competent on the phone. I called the claims department to add the transactions that have finished pending to my claim and also make sure they saw the scan of the check. The lady assured me I'd be getting all my money back, including the insufficient fund fees, and actually froze my account (the customer service lady at the physical bank gave me a look as if I had asked her to move a mountain and asked "How am I supposed to do that??" When I asked about freezing the account from any more of these popping up).

Still gonna be keeping an eye out for a new bank or credit union though. Unfortunately I can't afford any that will charge me any monthly fees.

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Are you a student? I don't pay any fees for my checking account at C1 because I'm a full time student.

I was getting great service with WaMu. It's a shame that Chase had to absorb them.

They had funny commercials, if I'm thinking of the right bank.

David said:

It seems I finally got somebody competent on the phone. I called the claims department to add the transactions that have finished pending to my claim and also make sure they saw the scan of the check. The lady assured me I'd be getting all my money back, including the insufficient fund fees, and actually froze my account (the customer service lady at the physical bank gave me a look as if I had asked her to move a mountain and asked "How am I supposed to do that??" When I asked about freezing the account from any more of these popping up).

Still gonna be keeping an eye out for a new bank or credit union though. Unfortunately I can't afford any that will charge me any monthly fees.

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Credit Unions generally just require you keep a minimum amount in your savings account, mine right now is $25 what is needed, everything else is free. Only drawback is they don't usually have many ATMs around town. I switched from Wells Fargo a few years ago after dealing with their bullshit and have not looked back since.

https://www.checkingfinder.com/

Heard about this site on a financial talk radio show (yeah, that's how I roll). It found me a no-fee, interest-paying checking account with a local bank that I couldn't be happier with. Also, if you have any family members that were in the military, you might qualify to join USAA, which I would highly recommend for ANYONE who qualifies. Everything is done online, even check deposits.

Just looked at my online account, the fraud charges and all the fees have been refunded and I'm back to my original amount. Crises over, I guess.

...BUT FOR HOW LONG?

Just until I press the "Place Order" button on amazon for all this cool shit...

But really, I'm glad everything's back to normal!

David said:

Just looked at my online account, the fraud charges and all the fees have been refunded and I'm back to my original amount. Crises over, I guess.

...BUT FOR HOW LONG?

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Yay!!!

Lucky bastard. Good for you!

congrats