Bank acted fairly in denying customer’s chargeback request

Categories:

Chargebacks,

Summary:

Between November 2020 and September 2021, an online dating site charged more than $10,000 to Orval's debit card. Orval contacted the bank to say he did not authorise any of the payments and must have been hacked. The bank believed Orval made the payments himself and refused to initiate a chargeback. Orval complained to us.

Published:

April 2023

Our investigation

An unauthorised payment is usually a valid ground for a chargeback. However, the bank had strong evidence Orval had made the payments himself. It was able to show the payments were all made from the same IP address Orval used to do his everyday internet banking. Also, Orval's debit card had been cancelled and reissued in early 2021, and payments to the dating site soon restarted using the new card's details. It was highly unlikely scammers would have been able to obtain Orval's card information twice without his involvement.

We considered the bank had strong reasons to conclude Orval was not eligible to have the transactions refunded, and acted fairly in refusing to initiate Orval's chargeback request.