Beware of US Bank's Visa Buxx Card Since August of this year, I have been at war with U.S. Bank over $1200
in fraudulent, unauthorized charges made in Europe to my daughter's Visa
Buxx card (which has not left the United States this year). Here is my
first letter:


"Dear Mr. Grundhofer:

I write to describe your abysmal customer service before I contact
attorneys to initiate a class action lawsuit against U.S. Bank for
damages arising from your failure to honor your contact with your
Visabuxx holders.

My story is simple. On August 9, 2006, my daughter found her Visabuxx
account drained of money. She immediately notified U.S. Bank by calling
the customer service number on the back of the card. She was told at
that time that she would be sent a form to fill out to document the
fraudulent transactions that she identified. It was not difficult to
identify the transactions, as we live in Santa Monica, California, and
they all were processed with merchants in Europe.

The form for reporting the fraudulent transactions never arrived.
Indeed, we received several letters dated August 21, 2006 in a single
envelope from your company stating that we would be contacted if any
further information was needed. See Exhibit 1.

As an attorney who has represented banks, I remained concerned about
these charges and contacted your company on August 31, 2006 to inquire
about the status and whether I needed to take any further action. On
that date, I sent two emails and a letter, in addition to spending
several fruitless hours on the telephone with your customer service
representatives who could not answer (and still cannot answer) my
questions. My August 31 communications are attached to this letter as
Exhibit 2.

Following my August 31 communications, I received the emails attached
as Exhibit 3 to this letter. As you can see, in each instance, I replied
immediately to any communication from your company. The reverse was not
true. In addition, I was repeatedly assured that no further action was
necessary on our part to facilitate investigation of this matter.

On September 11, 2006, I received five letters from your company
concerning the fraudulent transactions. The letters were all dated
September 3, 2006. The single envelope containing all of the letters was
self-marked and dated September 1, 2006. Let me emphasize that these
letters did not arrive at my home until my regular postal delivery on
the afternoon of September 11. Exhibit 4 is a copy of those letters and
of the envelope containing them. In the letters, you imposed a deadline
of September 11, 2006 for us to respond to an August 18, 2006 letter
that we never received and that was mentioned for the first time in the
September 3, 2006, letter despite our many inquiries concerning this
matter.

I replied via facsimile the same day, September 11, 2006, and called
your customer service line as well. See Exhibit 5. Finally, on September
11, 2006, at 10:30 p.m., Sabrina, CSR # 2865, agreed to fax to me the
fraud forms within 24 hours. I received the forms the next morning,
September 12, 2006, completed them, and returned them to you via fax the
same day. See Exhibit 5. Indeed, the very fax number included on all of
the letters and on the fax cover sheet was not operational so I had to
call your customer service line again on the evening of September 12,
2006 and was given a second number. I immediately faxed the documents to
the new fax number provided, as well as to the fax number shown on your
fax cover sheet. Even then, I was requested after speaking to the
supervisor, Sam, CSR #2541, to resend the faxed forms to second number
(953-377-4438) addressed to Ormela Prashad. I complied with this request
as well. See Exhibit 5.

It is now September 13, 2006, and my account still has not been
credited for these fraudulent transactions despite countless hours on
the phone with numerous customer service representatives. This
transcends fraud; it is theft. Your company has breached its cardholder
agreement and Visa's no loss guarantee. It also has committed mail
fraud. I am able to document my side of the story, as you can see. Can
you document yours? I have not spoken to a single customer service
representative of your company who is able to produce the "August
18, 2006" letter referenced in your September 3, letter. If a letter
was sent on August 18, why on August 21, 2006, two days later, did you
say "if we need additional information from you in order to perform
our research, we may need to contact you"?

As I stated above, I am a lawyer with experience in dealing with these
matters. An ordinary consumer with a 9 to 5 job and no legal training
would be utterly at your mercy. By copy of this letter, I am notifying
the California Attorney General, the Federal Reserve Board, Visa USA,
and any consumer or media group that is interested concerning your
shoddy practices."


This was not the end of the story, however. The rest is contained in
this letter to the OCC and the California AG:



"This letter supplements the above-referenced complaint. As you may
recall, we submitted forms to the bank identifying five fraudulent
transactions on September 12, 2006. We received form letters from the
bank acknowledging receipt of all of our dispute forms in September. On
October 20, 2006, we received 4 (four) additional letters from the bank
concerning four of the five fraudulent charges. These letters were dated
October 13, 2006, but the envelopes transmitting those letters were
dated October 18, 2006. See Exhibit 1. We responded to those letters on
the date we received them, October 20, 2006.

On November 1, 2006, I spent 3 (three) continuous hours with customer service at the bank
concerning my daughter Hilary's account, which I could not and still
(two days later) cannot access online. I was informed by the bank at
that time that we received credit for the four fraudulent charges
relating to the four October 13 letters, but that one of the charges,
for $212.76, had not been permanently credited to our account. We have
received no additional correspondence from the bank other than the
September acknowledgement of our dispute form concerning this charge. We
disputed this charge substantially more than 45 days ago, the maximum
time allowed by the customer agreement.

As I informed your representative, Electra, on November 1, the customer
service practices of U.S. Bank regarding their prepaid cards amount to a
"no customer service" policy. Victims of fraudulent charges are
given a customer service phone number that connects the caller to a
customer service center in India which has no direct access to the
disputed charges unit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We the consumers are
unable to discuss these fraudulent charges or the actions taken thereon
with anyone in this country who has access to the paperwork concerning
the fraudulent charges. In short, the entire system is designed to
frustrate the customer into acceding to the fraudulent charges rather
than disputing them. In my case, this has been exacerbated by my
inability to access my daughter's account online for three days
without any explanation from the bank.

I understand that many employers now use these prepaid cards to pay the
wages of their employees. I suggest that the OCC examine the safeguards
implemented by the issuers with respect to unauthorized charges before
allowing widespread use of prepaid cards for employee wages."


Unbelievably, I still cannot access my daughter’s account!!! Of course,
we are closing her account when it is empty.  ¶ 6:23 PM 0 Comments