Lee’s teenage son has a debit card, and he didn’t sign up for any credit monitoring services or ask for mysterious entities to call his cell phone 15-20 times every day. When the mysterious credit monitoring service charge showed up on his bill, his father disputed the charge and thought that was the end. The company disputed the dispute and got their charge reinstated. What now? As a Consumerist reader, Lee knew what to do.

In February, the well-known scam company MVQ (in one of its various entities) charged my son’s debit card $1 followed by $19.95 for a “credit monitoring service”. My 16 y/o does not order anything off the internet, and every one of his charges are to local stores. He certainly doesn’t have any need for a credit monitoring service! In late January he began getting 15-20 calls a day on his cell phone from numbers we could trace back to other scams (we had to call AT&T to stop all those calls). Shortly thereafter, he received those bogus charges from MVQ.

Our first contact with Chase was positive; the phone rep apologized and immediately reversed the charges. She cancelled my son’s debit card and had another one mailed to us.

Last week, however, we received a letter from Chase stating the scammers disputed the reversal, so Chase was reversing their reversal and re-debited the charges. I spent an annoying 10 minutes with a Chase “claims investigator” who told me that as the scammers had my son’s debit card number and full address Chase considered this a legitimate charge. No amount of verbal sparring would convince this rep otherwise.

As a long-time Consumerist reader, I knew to search the consumerist.com archives and found several Chase executive email addresses. I sent a detailed (and polite) email explaining the circumstances. This morning I received a phone call from a VERY kind and helpful rep in the executive offices. She apologized that it took me going to “that level” to get my issue resolved, told me she had personally spoken to a manager employed by the scammers, and that my son’s account had already been credited.

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