u/WkndCity

If so, what issuer and how was the resolution?

I’ll start. I’ve been a victim twice, including last week which was the inspiration for this post.

Most recently was on my Wells Fargo Autograph card. They racked up $3,800 over 6 charges that I caught almost immediately. Reporting was a breeze and took roughly 10 minutes over the phone. Account was closed and replacement card shipped. The charges were temporarily refunded on the spot, then fully refunded and cleared 5 days later after the investigation. Overall an easy process with a quick and positive resolution.

The first time was a different story. About 5 years ago someone used my social to open a Best Buy Citi card in store and spent $6,100. I’m really curious as to how this happened too, I guess they had faked an ID with my name on it or something.

I caught this one immediately as well thanks to credit monitoring. Reporting was a pain, took about an hour on the phone after being bounced around to multiple departments. I was assured that I wouldn’t be responsible and the account was closed. I was naive since this was my first time dealing with fraud so I thought this was the end of it and never followed up.

2 months later I get a credit alert that I’ve got an account that is behind on payments and my credit score tanked. (Not sure why I didn’t get an alert after the first missed payment but I guess that’s what you get using free service) After another saga of being on the phone for over an hour with Citi being bounced around to multiple people that couldn’t comprehend what I was calling about, I finally got transferred to a supervisor. I was told that I never reported the account as fraud and that I just called to close the account. I was mildly gaslit but eventually told that they would look into it and get back to me. Multiple days later I receive a call back saying that the original person that handled it never reported it as fraud and just closed the account so now they’d have to start their investigation. This took over 2 months where I was called multiple times by investigators who seemingly didn’t communicate because I’d have to explain the situation start to finish all over again. It was eventually determined that I didn’t open the account and that they’d reach out to the bureaus to get it removed from my history. This also took several months but it was eventually cleared thankfully. Overall a terrible, drawn out experience that destroyed my credit for almost a year, with the one positive of them actually removing the charges.