Consumerist reader Lauren is caught in an ugly loop with the billing folks at Target.com. It seems she made a purchase a couple weeks back on the Target site and paid with her debit card. She eventually received everything, but now Lauren says that Target is continually authorizing her debit card for random amounts up to two times per week.

Here’s Lauren to speak for herself:

These phantom authorizations pop up, my funds are held up in my checking, and then they disappear without fully being charged in a few days.

Since this is my debit card and there is no reason they should be authorizing charges I do not account for such things and all of my bills are automatically paid through my checking only to not be paid because my account is NEGATIVE due to TARGET’S illegal authorizations and I am charged overdraft fees from my bank again and again.

Target not only owes me hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees caused by them but they haven’t stopped charging my card!

I am in a huge mess because of them. Each time I call Target I spend over 2 hours on the phone with them (10 hours total last week alone), and I reach a second level supervisor who tells me they know of this glitch but they do not know how to fix it.

They agree to refund me my overdraft fees YET each time they try to refund it gets worse and I am authorized for even MORE money and to this date have not received refunds. Each day I wake up to more Target phantom authorizations (today there were three separate ones, totaling in over $200).

I am involved with my bank to do an investigation but there is a lot more that I need from Target. PLUS I cannot close my card down yet for other reasons… I need to speak with someone high up at Target to remedy this situation.

We’ve reached out to Target HQ to see if someone there will be willing to deal directly with Lauren to get this resolved. If they get back to us — or if some proactive Target exec sees this and contacts us on their own — we will update her story.

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