Anyone experienced Credit Card Protection Scam?
Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at
8:54 am
Two years ago I was looking over paid CC bills, and had $365 charged to my CC overtime, from a protection insurance company that I had NOT signed up for. I called & they assured my they wouldn’t have charged me without my voice concent, or a signed document. In the end they had NO proof I signed up for it. I was refunded.
Recently it has happened again. A different Protection Plan that I have NOT signed up for. They have, what I consider, stolen, almost $250 dollars from me. I have contacted them only to be told they wouldn’t charge me unless they had a signed document. Well, long story short, they can’t show me proof…they will actually hang up on me when I ask for a supervisor…
My CC company says they can’t get involved in the dispute.
What do I do???? Does this happen a lot? I have even considered getting an Atty.
In the future I will pay closer attention…but that won’t help me now.
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They’re getting your approval somehow. Be careful what you sign.
I have never experienced it but i just always opt out from the credit protection all together. I think that if you think that you might need the credit protection that you shouldn’t even get the card, that’s just my opinion.
Good luck!!
Yes I’ve had this happen before…with Crapital One, back in summer 2002. But $365 or $250???!! That’s ABSURDLY high! What they are to charge you that much! Wow I thought Capital One was screwing me over when they charged me $50 without my permission!
Back in 2002, I went out to dinner with my friends and had them pay their share in cash, and I would put the whole thing on my credit card. Embarrassingly enough, my card got declined and I didn’t know why. >:( I found out a day later when I called to inquire about how my balance got so high, and found out about the $50 “credit card protection” charge they’d added without my consent. Ironic, but adding a charge like that without my permission made me feel like my credit card was anything BUT protected. >:( I called and the 1st rep was a bi.tch and refused to remove it. It took 2 or 3 attempts before I reached a sympathetic and understanding rep that removed the charge. She explained that I was far from the only person who’d gone through that problem. She sugar-coated things a little by saying that the credit protection company had “aggressive sales tactics,” although I think “aggressive” is way too nice of a word to describe such outright theft.
It doesn’t end there though…the credit for the $50 charge didn’t appear until my next statement printed, so in the meantime, my next charge(which somehow went through, even though the prior restaurant charge didn’t; cannot explain that one) put me over my limit and I got a $29 overlimit fee. I HATED those fees. So I had to call the reps AGAIN and ask them to remove the overlimit fee.
Then 3 months later when I petitioned to get my paltry $200 credit limit raised, I got rejected on the basis of the overlimit fee that had been issued 3 months prior! Even though they’d refunded me the $29 for the fee, they’d never removed the note of it from my records! So I called the reps again, and threw a yelling match about the whole thing until a very nice, calm rep appeased me by doubling my credit limit.
The moral is, you have to be VERY persistent and pushy about getting the charges removed. Act like an immature brat if you have to…worked for me. Threaten them with lawyers, the FTC, the Better Business Bureau, etc. Write a report about the inciden to the Better Business Bureau’s website…it worked for me in a few other situations. It might take close to a year to clear it up…but stay persistent, even though staying persistent can be annoying, time consuming, and it can use up a lot of cell phone minutes.
The biggest “scam” credit companies are usually the subprime ones, i.e., companies that target people with bad credit and/or barely any credit history. In the future, steer clear of banks such as Capital One, HSBC, Household Bank, First Premier, Aspire, etc. They’re scumbags.