Dear Tripped Up,
Last October, my extended family spent a week in Todos Santos, on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, for a wedding. Everything went well, but when I returned, I noticed an unusual charge on my credit card: $1,500.49, made on the day of our flight back to the United States from San José del Cabo. The merchant appeared to be a Mexico City restaurant. I remember when we went to fill up the rental car at a Chevron station near the airport, the attendant placed the card in a handheld machine then told me it had been rejected, telling me requiring the use of a second card. Nothing unusual happened that day, and Google reviews for this gas station contain very similar accusations of fraudulent charges from other tourists. I disputed this accusation, but Wells Fargo repeatedly denied my claim, even when I asked the Better Business Bureau to intercede. Can you help ? Nate, Wayland, Mass.
Dear Nat,
We can’t be sure if the fraud took place at the gas station, but if it did, it’s a clever scam. The worker allegedly swiped your card through a fake card reader and charged you $1,500 just as you were rushing to return your rental car and catch a flight out of the country, knowing you were unlikely to report the crime to Mexican authorities. It’s a good reminder to travelers that we should always be vigilant on vacation, even when we’re cranky, tired, stressed, or out of our element.
It’s also a good excuse to consider how dependent we’ve become on our credit card issuers to save the day in such situations. As you’ve discovered, this doesn’t always happen.
Indulge me while I look at the situation from the perspective of a bank like Wells Fargo. What may seem like obvious fraud when it happens to us is not necessarily an obvious crime to a fraud claims team tasked with filtering its customers who are honest vacationers from others who may themselves be fraudsters.
Since I hope you are in the former camp, I contacted Wells Fargo and shortly after a representative contacted you by phone and agreed to refund the fee, plus interest. A week later, you received a check for $1,609.96.
“We take customer concerns seriously and thoroughly investigate all customer complaints,” Jennifer Langan, a company spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement. “We have worked directly with our customer on this issue, and the issue is resolved.”
But of course this should have been resolved sooner and without my intervention. Is there anything you should have done differently? Was there anything Wells Fargo should have done differently?
The answers are yes and yes.
Although you explicitly authorized Wells Fargo to discuss the incident with me, Ms. Langan told me that the company would not discuss the details of your case. But she left a hint when she wrote to me that Wells Fargo encourages customers to take action “when they receive a fraud alert, phone call or correspondence regarding a transaction.”
So I asked you to check your phone and email messages with Wells Fargo at the time of your trip, and the bank sent you a fraud alert, via text message, around the time of the transaction. You didn’t receive it then, you said, because you hadn’t been able to receive messages while you were in Mexico. And you somehow missed it on the way home.
While I encourage everyone to go offline while traveling, I will now recommend an exception for texting so you can keep track of your credit card transactions. (You might even consider asking your bank to alert you every time a transaction takes place, even if it’s not suspicious, which can also be useful for monitoring the exchange rate you’re getting.)
What happened on Wells Fargo’s side that caused them to repeatedly reject your application? Although I was unable to obtain specific details from Ms. Langan, we know exactly what the Wells Fargo representative said, since you recorded the call with his permission.
The agent told you it was “normal procedure” for Wells Fargo fraud teams to deny fraud claims if a chip card was in the owner’s possession the entire time, which you told them . But technically it was incorrect: The card briefly slipped out of your hand as the station attendant grabbed it and inserted it into a handheld device in your car window.
OK, so you didn’t see the text alert and didn’t properly analyze what exactly “in your possession” meant. But given your continued calls and the online reviews of the gas station And others in the area that corroborate your story, it is disappointing that Wells Fargo continues to be so stubborn.
The representative you spoke to admits that the team who worked on your case could have done better. “We are going to try to review our procedures,” she said, noting that she had coached the person who made the decision on how to conduct “better and more thorough research.”
That’s good to hear, although I would feel more confident if I had heard it directly from an official company source rather than in a recorded phone call.
Here’s another tip for travelers, as mobile card readers become the default payment method in many places: When possible, ask for the machine and insert (or tap) the card yourself, looking carefully the screen. In much of the world (although for some reason this is not the case in many American restaurants), the days of a merchant picking up your card to run it through a machine (and potentially a skimmer for stealing your information) is long gone.
Even if you were reasonably frustrated with Wells Fargo, let’s be clear. The real bad guys are the ones who committed this crime in the first place and who somehow, whether at the gas station or elsewhere, managed to charge $1,500 to a company called Comida Corrida in distant Mexico City.
I contacted Grupo Horizon, which operates the Chevron Emerald gas station where you went, as well as dozens of Chevron stations in the states of Baja California Sur and Sinaloa.
Gilberto Gómez, the company’s commercial director, responded by email saying he was unaware of these issues and encouraged you to send him details. “We take the follow-up of this type of complaint very seriously and meticulously,” he wrote in Spanish. “If there is any harm caused to our customers because of the gas station, we will remedy it. » (I gave you his email address and you told me you would follow up with him.)
But given the Google reviews for this location and several other (non-Chevron) gas stations in the area, I’m skeptical that Grupo Horizon isn’t aware of the problem. Mr. Gómez did not respond when I asked twice if he had seen the Google reviews.
I also contacted the Los Cabos Tourism Office. When its general director, Rodrigo Esponda, responded to me, he told me he was “deeply concerned about the situation” and that he had spoken to the Baja California Sur state attorney’s office, who told him he was investigating the matter. He also recommended that tourists who have complaints about a business in the area should save them with the Mexican federal consumer protection agency, Profeco.
In the meantime, could the solution simply be to pay cash at gas stations in the Cabo area? Alas, no: there are also reports that pump attendants are replacing large bills that customers pay for smaller bills and demanding more. And don’t even get me started on the Tripped Up complaints about the poor customer service travelers encounter at rental car agencies near Mexican beach destinations. The best solution for sun-seekers may be to forgo car rental altogether and hire a driver, use ride-sharing services, or take public transportation.
If you need advice on an optimal travel plan gone wrong, email TrippedUp@nytimes.com.
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