Check Your Bank & Credit Card Statements

Banks and credit card companies share monthly statements for reasons. You are supposed to check these statements for any mistakes, especially fraudulent charges. Some transactions trigger red flags that your financial accounts will be frozen. Two summers ago, during a travel, my credit card call me asking if I had a financial transaction for an escort service.

Anyways, this time, I did my regular bank ad credit card transaction checking. This particular transaction looked weird:

 

04/02/14	04/02/14	PAYPAL 402-935-7733 CA PAYPAL 402-935-7733 CA <REFERENCE ****************> Billing Location 402-935-7733,CA Category Legal Services Service Description Manually Entered Don’t remember this purchase? Review your options	$54.50

 

The charge did not appear in PayPal (many would miss this). Anyways: googling “PAYPAL 402-935-7733 CA”, I got a list of Google results indicating fraudulent charge, like this: “suspected fraudulent charge – 402-935-7733 – PayPal ”

Fraudulent Evidence

So, appropriately, I shared this info with my children, hoping that they will learn to check their financial statements:

…. Just wanna share w you :::: Every month, I check my online bank and CC statements (that’s when my heart dropped when I saw somebody’s ******** bills). Anihoo, I saw this weird charge claiming to be by Paypal. After checking the merchant number (obtained from the statement), the number was associated with a scam, i.e. people trying to steal money via banks. Just sharing ….. . In this case, the “legal services” flagged it off to me.. – F

…. and that they know that unnecessary or avoidable bills hurt!!!

 

The dispute process was easy with my bank. On the online statement, I had to maximize the transaction line to see the option to dispute this particular charge. My bank has been kind enough to respond to my dispute. I got this response within 10 days:

We’re making progress on your dispute

Dispute Number: 
Date Posted:  
Merchant Name: PAYPAL
Amount of Transaction: 54.50
Card Number: 
Status:   Temporary Credit


We are currently investigating your dispute. This review could take up to 60 days to complete.

In the meantime, we’ve temporarily credited your account (this can take 48 hours to show on your account) for the amount of the disputed transaction.

If the merchant agrees that you are owed a refund, the temporary credit becomes permanent, and we’ll close your dispute.

If the merchant disagrees with our request, we’ll contact you with more details on what happens next.

Sincerely,

[Bank] Dispute Resolution Center

 

Thank you, my bank!!!