Justin fought the scammers and emerged victorious. When he saw fraudulent charges pending on his account, he dutifully called his bank, Chase. When the bank told them that there was nothing they could do until the charges went through and his money was gone, he took action. Here’s how he did it.

Just wanted to tell a story about how I beat a scammer to my money.

I have an account with Chase Bank that unfortunately had some fraudulent charges made to it on 3/5/11. One to a Furniture Store in the United Kingdom for $748 and the other to an online pharmacy for $319. I found out about it while checking my balance on my cell phone the day it happened. I call Chase and notify them of the issue. They tell me that there is nothing they could do until the charges are no longer pending. This makes me furious the only thing that they can do is cancel my card.

I took matters into my own hands. To my good fortune the billing descriptors on the cards mentioned the URL’s of both sites that were charged. I wanted to catch these before they shipped. I did research and found phone numbers for both of the companies. I bought a $10 Skype credit to call international and started dialing companies in hopes to get my money back. It is 1:30 AM California time when I make these calls. I only had a couple of pieces of information to give them. The card number, my name and address and the amount of the transaction.

I called the first company which is an online pharmacy and they were very helpful. I talked with a supervisor and they said they would stop the charge. That was fairly easy…

The second business was a furniture store. I talked to a very nice gentleman who was very concerned with the issue but really couldn’t do much because it was a Saturday and they were not fully staffed. Today 3/7/2011 I receive an email from the furniture store saying that they are processing a full refund.

I was very surprised at my results. The charges are still pending today and Chase still can’t technically do anything. The products would have shipped by now and I would have been waiting on there frauds department. I will still process a claim but it is mind boggling to me why I had to do this myself. I am waiting on refunds from both companies because of the work I did myself. I was hoping Chase would do a little better than what they did for me.

You are always your best advocate!

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