Finally they corrected their error, but I would never be their customer again!

Here is my problem -

    I had this Mastercard account for just over 5 years then in early June I had some minor charge(s?) declined and a form letter dated June 13 and received by me June 20th.  The account at this time had 2 cards.  One ended in 4804 with a secondary card ending in 9476

On 6/28/19 the monthly statement arrived and I phoned their toll free number at 3 pm and spoke to CS representative Joseph.  I asked about the statement I had just gotten which showed a charge from Sao Paulo Brazil for $18.99 and a transaction fee of 57 cents, these being on the card ending in 9476.  

I got minimal response or information despite saying that there had not been any charges on the account from Brazil and that the charge was incorrect.  

After wasting 20 minutes on this I just asked what other charges were on the card, was told that there was one for $7.78 from a local restaurant and it would be on the next statement.  

It was from card ending in 4804.  I did recognize this charge which was mine and was correct and at this point I told Joseph to close the account.

I immediately wrote a check for the correct outstanding balance which was $7.78 and sent it to them the next day.  I did not make any payment for the bogus charge from Brazil.  

As far as I was concerned they were paid, the account was closed and that was the end of the matter.

Despite my having said repeatedly that the charge from Brazil was bogus it seems that no dispute was put in by Joseph and the next month the statement arriving on 7/31/19 showed my $7.78 payment but it also continued to bill me for the bogus Brazil charge and transaction fee, along with a 'late fee' of $20.06.

I promptly called CS and they sent me to 'Fraud' where I spoke to Scott who was supposed to see that the charge was finally disputed and the Brazil charge and the late fee were to be removed.

Following up on this on 8/6/19 I found that nothing had been done and the account was shown as delinquent.  I spoke to CS Russel at 4:45 pm and after 12 minutes he said he would have to forward the call to Fraud where I was on the line for another 26 minutes with no one coming on the line to speak to me.  This call lasted for 38 minutes in total and accomplishing absolutely nothing.   I hung up and started this blog.

Barclaycard is a total waste of time, there is absolutely no follow through either with Customer Non-Service of the Fraud Department.

Hell will freeze over before this firm gets even one cent of the $39.78 they claim I owe them.


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Here is my assumption on this charge, don't have anything like proof just wild guess.

Millions of card numbers are floating around for sale on the dark web.  Some have all the info on the card 'owner', some probably just a name and card number/exp date.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Brazil purchased a block of these numbers and through one or many firms made minor charges for unspecified but small amounts.

A lot of people probably don't read their statements carefully and something for a minor amount from a company with 'Facebook' in their name might slip by a lot of card holders and they just pay whatever the total amount that the card company is billing them for.

For someone like me, not using my card often, finds a single charge that month for $18.99 from Brazil, it stands out like a sore thumb.

If you have made 30 or so charges on your monthly statement you might not even notice one for $18.99.  It might slip by for thousands of card holders and $18.99 x 5,000 people who didn't bother to read the statement closely or just assumed it was their charge is a quick $94,950 for someone in a third world country.

I doubt that any card company is going to admit that scamsters are using some of their card numbers to defraud account holders.  Barclaycard probably just hopes no one notices.



Misc.  I have no idea why, but another card on this account did show up on 6/26/19.  The other 2 I had already cut up and tossed in the trash.

Documents FYI:

Misc:  I have not bothered to block out the card info as it is a closed card and I have credit freezes on with all the credit reporting firms.

Misc:  Sometimes I just scrawl notes on the nearest piece of paper and go back later to get them.

Putting it in writing: