Dear Stumbler,
Last October, my relatives went to Todos Santos, Mexico, on the Baja California peninsula for a week for a wedding. Everything went well, but when we returned, we noticed an unfamiliar charge on our credit card for $1,500.49. The charge was made on the day we flew back to the US from San Jose del Cabo. The charge appeared to be from a restaurant in Mexico City. I recalled filling up my rental car at a Chevron gas station near the airport, where the attendant inserted my card into the handheld machine and told me to use a different card because my card was rejected. Nothing else unusual happened that day, and Google reviews of this gas station contain eerily similar accounts of fraudulent charges made by other tourists. I disputed the charge, but Wells Fargo repeatedly denied my charges, and my requests to mediate with the Better Business Bureau were rejected. Can you help? Nate, Wayland, Massachusetts
Dear Nate,
It's unclear if the scam took place at the gas station, but if it did, it was an ingenious one. Presumably while you were rushing to return your rental car and catch a flight out of the country, the attendant inserted your card into a fake card reader and charged you $1,500, knowing you would likely not report the crime to Mexican authorities. A good lesson for travelers to stay vigilant while on vacation, even when you're cranky, tired, stressed, or just not your forte.
This is also a good excuse to think about how dependent we are on our credit card issuers to bail us out in situations like this. As we all know, that's not always the case.
Listen to me while I consider the situation from the perspective of a bank like Wells Fargo: What seems like obvious fraud to us isn't necessarily an obvious crime to the fraud claims team, which is tasked with sifting out customers who are honest travelers from those who might be scammers.
Since you believe it to be the former, I contacted Wells Fargo. A representative contacted you by phone shortly thereafter and agreed to refund the fees and interest. A week later, you received a check for $1,609.96.
“We take our customers' concerns seriously and are diligently investigating their allegations,” company spokesperson Jennifer Langan told me in an email. “We have negotiated the matter directly with the customer and have resolved it.”
But of course, it should have been resolved sooner without my involvement. Is there anything I should have done differently? Is there anything Wells Fargo should have done differently?
The answers are “yes” and “yes.”
Although you explicitly authorized Wells Fargo to discuss the case with me, Ms. Langan said the company would not discuss the specifics of your case. But she did leave clues, writing to me that Wells Fargo encourages customers to act “if they receive a fraud alert, call or communication regarding a transaction.”
So I asked you to review any phone calls and email messages you had with Wells Fargo during your trip, and you found that the bank had texted you a fraud alert around the time of the transaction, and you said that you didn't receive it at the time because you weren't able to receive messages while you were in Mexico, and somehow missed it after you returned home.
We recommend disconnecting from the internet when you travel, but from now on, make an exception for text messages so you can monitor your credit card transactions. (You might also consider setting it up to notify your bank every time a transaction occurs, even if it's not suspicious. This will also help you keep an eye on the exchange rates you're getting.)
What happened on Wells Fargo's end that caused your claim to be denied multiple times? I wasn't able to get specific details from Ms. Langan, but I recorded the call with the Wells Fargo representative's permission, so I know exactly what the representative said.
The attendant said it was “standard procedure” for Wells Fargo's fraud team to deny fraud claims if the chip card was in the owner's possession the whole time. You also told him that. But technically, that was wrong. The card had been out of your hand for a short time when the attendant took it and inserted it into the handheld machine in the car window.
I see, you didn't see the text alert and didn't correctly interpret what exactly “on your property” meant, but given your continued protestations and the online reviews of the gas station and others in the area that back up your explanation, it's unfortunate that Wells Fargo continued to stand firm.
The official you spoke to acknowledged that the team who worked on your case could have done better: “We will seek to review our procedures,” she said, and said she had coached the person who made the decision on how to conduct a “better, more thorough investigation.”
That's good to hear, but I would have felt more confident if I'd heard it directly from an official source at the company rather than on a recorded phone call.
As mobile card readers become the default payment method in many places, here's another tip for travelers: Whenever possible, ask for a machine and insert (or tap) your card yourself while watching the screen carefully. In much of the world (though for some reason not in many American restaurants), the days when a cashier would take your card to the back and swipe it through a machine (where a skimmer could potentially steal your information) are long gone.
I was understandably pretty frustrated with Wells Fargo, but let's be clear: The real bad guys are the people who committed this crime in the first place, who charged a company called Comida Corrida in far-away Mexico City, at a gas station or somewhere else, $1,500.
I have been in contact with Grupo Horizon, the company that operates the Chevron Emerald gas station you went to, as well as dozens of other Chevron stations in Baja California Sur and Sinaloa.
Gilberto Gómez, the company's general manager of operations, responded by email, saying he was not aware of such a problem and encouraging him to send in the details. “We follow up on complaints of this nature very seriously and with great care,” he wrote in Spanish. “If any harm is caused to our customers because of the gas station, we will take action.” (I gave you his email address and you said you would follow up with him.)
But given the Google reviews for this location and other gas stations in the area (other than Chevron), it seems doubtful that Grupo Horizon is unaware of the problem. I asked Gomez twice if he had seen the Google reviews, but he didn't respond.
I also contacted the Los Cabos Tourism Board, whose managing director, Rodrigo Esponda, told me he was “deeply concerned about the situation” and that he had contacted the Baja California Sur state prosecutor's office, which said it was looking into the matter. He also encouraged tourists with complaints about businesses in the area to register with Profeco, Mexico's federal consumer protection agency.
Meanwhile, can you just pay cash at Cabo-area gas stations? Unfortunately, not. There have been reports of gas station attendants swapping customers' larger bills for smaller ones and then demanding more, not to mention complaints about the poor customer service travelers encounter at rental car companies near Mexico's beach resorts. The best solution for sunbathers may be to forgo renting a car altogether and hire a driver, use a car-sharing service or take public transportation.
Need advice on what to do when your best-laid-out travel plans go awry? Email TrippedUp@nytimes.com.
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