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Does Discover Card facilitate fraud?
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Recently my family was victimized by a Discover Card Merchant, and Discover doesn't want to take any responsibility.
I (along with my wife) have recently had a very bad experience where we used our Discover Card to purchase a vacation package. The travel agent made fraudulent promises that I believe they never intended to make good on, but the really bad thing happened when we tried to get Discover Card Services to intervene on our behalf to help us get our money back. We have made many phone calls to Discover Card concerning this Debacle and have talked to several really nice people, but unfortunately this kind of fraud isn't included in that 100% fraud protection that Discover likes to talk about. So the result so far has been no action whatsoever on the part of Discover.
Several years ago I helped to set up a web site for retail sales, and during that process I dealt directly with setting up merchant credit card services for major credit cards including Discover Card. In the course of establishing an account with a merchant bank and credit card gateway and associated services I became familiar with the agreement that my company had with all of the credit card companies and processing entities. Anyway, I came to believe that the credit card companies were really conscientiously looking out for their customers and that if a merchant didn't live up to their end of a bargain that they would at least be subject to charge backs and possibly loose their privilege to accept credit cards. This belief gave me what I now know is a false sense of security when it comes to making purchases with a credit card.
Now Despite the fact that we have paid for a vacation that we haven't taken and probably never will the previously mentioned travel agency has turned us over to a collection agency for more than the amount that the vacation was going to be to begin with (about $325.00 more). Now keep in mind that we already used our Discover Card to pay for the vacation and we haven't even taken it. Now they want more money. And, Discover still won't do anything. It apparently isn't their problem. Perhaps it's not. Nonetheless, from my point of view Discover Card Services were used to fraudulently separate me from my hard earned money, and I'm pretty disappointed that their "100% Fraud Protection" doesn't apply to this kind of fraud. Furthermore if we didn't have the false security which was caused by that promise of 100% Fraud Protection we might not have become involved in this to begin with. I thought that 100 percent would cover pretty much all fraud. I guess not.
Anyway, let the buyer beware, and if you are victimized by a Discover Card Merchant you can expect to get the opportunity to talk to a lot of nice people at Discover Card Services. Unfortunately, you probably shouldn't expect much more than talk. Be careful out there, because you are on your own.