Fraud not fraud

I work in secondline disputes at a bank. I deal with everything from submitting 1st presentment chargebacks to case filing to investigating supposed fraud on an account.

This was escalated by one of the Frontline team as 3rd party fraud (ie. someone had defrauded the customer). We’re required to investigate and refund these within 24 hours (by law) unless we have reasonable suspicion that the customer is trying to defraud us (a lot of my job is dealing with those people)

This is all over chat so I read through the notes and skim read the previous conversation. Customer has essentially complained that she didn’t make two transactions on the account. She’s been asked the usual do you lose your card, did you give anyone your PIN etc. questions and it transpires she didn’t (these are online transactions anyway). The transactions have passed AVS (address verification) and her card details were obviously entered correctly and other bits of the account history suggest this probably isn’t 3rd party fraud…

Me = me

Stubbon Customer = cust

Me: hi it’s redacted from the disputes team. Person xyz has asked me to take a look at this for you. Can I just confirm which transactions you have a problem with?

Cust: it’s the two for $X earlier today. I didn’t authorise them and I want you to refund them immediately!

Me: okay, thank you. Am I right in saying you have the app for Company B on your phone?

Cust: Yes. And when I try to get a refund on there it won’t let me so I want a refund from you now. This is unacceptable, your customer service used to be much better.

Me: I’m really sorry to hear that – have you tried reaching out to Company B at all?

Cust: NO! That’s your job – I can’t believe you’re even asking me this. I didn’t authorise these at all so they are fraud.

Me: But you have the app on your phone, right? And you recognise the transaction 2 minutes before?

Cust: Yeah but I didn’t authorise these – it didn’t work.

At this point we seem to be getting somewhere. At no point has anyone previously asked the customer whether she attempted to make the transactions. It was just assumed as she kept referring to it as fraud that it was exactly that.

Me: How do you mean “it didn’t work”? Did you try to make buy something?

Cust: Yes but I didn’t authorise it. It didn’t work. I want a refund now.

(Customers often keep demanding their money back instantly)

Me: But you put your card details into the app, right?

Cust: no. They were already saved.

(In fairness she got me there)

Me: okay, but you entered the CVC right?

Cust’ yes…but it’s completely the wrong item and I didn’t want two.

Me: well, I’m afraid you did authorise this so it’s not fraud. If there’s been a billing error you really need to reach out to company B first as our disputes take at least 45 days whereas they can refund you immediately. We also need evidence that you tried to contact them and unfortunately they won’t talk to us.

Customer continues on a bit of a rant but she does eventually take the contact details… In fairness to her, Company B did manage to make a right hash of charging the card.

Tl;Dr: customers don’t know what fraud is and get pissed off when we ask questions to try and work out what’s going on before accusing us of not doing our job properly.