Explore

I was defrauded of value I placed on 3 VR cards bought at CVS Pharmacy a couple of months ago. Others have reported issues with VGCs bought at Ralph's supermarkets. The cards have been tampered with, though this is often invisible to the store and the card buyer. The buyer puts value on the cards, they're activated, and before the buyer can load their Bluebird or similar prepaid value card, someone else has unloaded the value. The crooks have obtained the card numbers in the store or possibly prior to store delivery - and may check daily, or more often, to see if the cards have been activated.

In my case, the card manufacturer Incomm refused to issue me with replacement cards, instead suggesting I file a police report. Luckily I live in the jurisdiction where I bought the cards, and the police (reluctantly) did issue a report. I then approached the two banks whose cards I had used to make the purchases. US Bank took down the information over the phone, while Chase sent me a form to fill out. After a month, US Bank denied my request to vacate the charge, even though I spend a lot on their Flexperks card. The bank attached a handwritten note from CVS indicating that the cards had been properly activated, as if that was the end of the story. I'm still waiting to hear back from Chase. US Bank suggested I file a small claims case, which does appear to be my only option at this point.

Has anyone else had to go to Small Claims to be made whole? What was your experience?

LoveMountains

Have you already contacted FDIC?

particlemn

us bank suggested you file in small claims court? whom did they suggest you sue? I would think the only defendant for small claims court would be the person whom stole the money.

commdiver

So, neither Chase nor US Bank allowed you to file a chargeback?

wcj

Most banks chargeback period is 60 days after statement close. Been there, done that with raise.com and mobile GCs bought for an experiment gone awry so planning personal consumption. Raise coincidentally, guarantees 100% satisfaction for 60 days. SOL when the GCs were disabled when the CC that purchased the GCs for resale ended up being stolen.

kcblakely

What?

wcj

Sorry, guess I must be mistaken. Dunno, but it cost me $5k and I won't make that particular mistake again.....not when there are so many others to make.

Good Luck OP!

hamhead

This. You can't blame CVS or your CC company for this. Doing so just shoots yourself (and us) in the foot anyway.

Incomm at the very least should know what prepaid other than yours the funds were loaded to, and that Prepaid issuer should have names/socials on file. They're just lazy.

Alcibiades

Incomm is responsible. But you have to push very hard to get them to do anything.

Explore

Incomm did tell me (verbally) the date the funds were illicitly loaded and the brand of card they were loaded to. That was as far as they'd go - they told me to file a police report. But the police detective said the PD didn't get much additional information out of them, short of a subpoena.

How would FDIC be involved? What information would they want, and how would that help in Small Claims? Going to their "Report Fraud" page, I don't even see a category for this type of fraud.

Explore

How is that different than formally disputing a charge, which I've already done?

LoveMountains

Search this forum for the "dealing with Incomm thread". It should have all the info and links that you'd need. Unless someone has removed it, it used to have a proper link to an FDIC claim form.

Stoughton

https://www2.fdic.gov/starsmail/index.asp

https://dbo.secureprtportal.com/page...complaint.aspx

Explore

Thanks for the links. So would I name Incomm as the relevant financial institution (is it one?), or US Bank? Only one firm can be listed.

Update: The FDIC form appears to allow only for the bank, since it asks for the number of your account.

davef139

Incomm isn't a government regulated bank they will tell you to go away. Just like PayPal isn't.