Dear Stumbled,
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 the day we flew home to the United States from San Jose del Cabo. The merchant appeared to be a restaurant in Mexico City. I remembered that when we went to fill up the rental car at a Chevron station near the airport, the employee placed the card in a portable machine and then told me it had been declined, requiring me to use a second card. Nothing unusual happened that day, and Google reviews for this gas station contain eerily similar allegations of fraudulent charges by other tourists. I disputed the charge, but Wells Fargo repeatedly denied my claim, even when I asked the Better Business Bureau to intervene. Can you help? Nate, Wayland, Massachusetts.
Dear Nate,
We can’t be sure that the fraud occurred at the gas station, but if so, it’s a clever scam. The worker allegedly inserted your card into 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 for 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 have become on our credit card issuers to save the day in such situations. As you may have discovered, that doesn’t always happen.
Sit with me as I consider the situation from the perspective of a bank like Wells Fargo. What might seem like obvious fraud when it happens to us is not necessarily a crystal clear crime to a fraud claims team charged with distinguishing their clients who are honest tourists from others who may be scammers.
Since I trust you are in the above 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, he received a check for $1,609.96.
“We take customer concerns seriously and seriously investigate all customer complaints,” company spokesperson Jennifer Landan wrote in an emailed statement to me. “We worked directly with our client on this matter and it is resolved.”
But of course it should have been resolved earlier and without my intervention. Was 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 gave your permission for 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 dropped a hint, writing to me that Wells Fargo encourages customers to take action “when they receive a fraud alert, phone call, or correspondence about a transaction.”
I then asked him to check his phone and emails with Wells Fargo at the time of his trip, and the bank sent him a fraud alert, via text message, around the time of the transaction. He didn’t receive it at the time, he said, because he hadn’t been able to receive messages while he was in Mexico. And somehow you missed it when you returned home.
While I recommend everyone disconnect while traveling, from now on I will recommend an exception for text messages so you can monitor your credit card transactions. (You might even consider having your bank alert you whenever a transaction occurs, even if it’s not suspicious, which can also be helpful for monitoring the exchange rate you’re getting.)
What happened on Wells Fargo’s side that led them to deny your claim multiple times? 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 her permission.
The agent told you that it was “normal procedure” for Wells Fargo’s anti-fraud teams to deny fraud claims if a chip card was in the owner’s possession the entire time, and you told them that was the case. But technically speaking, that was incorrect: The card was briefly out of his hands when the station attendant took it and inserted it into a portable machine in the window of his car.
Okay, so you didn’t see the text alert and didn’t properly parse exactly what “in your possession” meant. But given his continued appeals and online reviews of the gas station and others in the area that corroborate his story, it’s disappointing that Wells Fargo continues to be so stubborn.
The representative he spoke with admitted that the team who worked on his case could have done better. “We’re going to try to review our procedures,” he said, noting that he had advised the person who made the decision on how to conduct a “better and more thorough investigation.”
It’s good to hear, although I would feel more confident if I had heard it directly from an official company source rather than from a recorded phone call.
Here’s another tip for travelers, as mobile card readers are becoming the default payment method in many places: When possible, ask for the machine and insert (or tap) the card yourself, watching the screen closely. attention. In much of the world (although for some reason, not in many American restaurants), the days of a merchant carrying his card on his back to run it through a machine (and potentially a skimmer to steal his information) are long gone.
Although I was reasonably frustrated with Wells Fargo, let’s be clear. The real villains are those who committed this crime in the first place and somehow, whether at the gas station or elsewhere, managed to collect $1,500 from a business called Comida Corrida in distant Mexico City.
I contacted Grupo Horizon, which operates the Chevron Emerald gas station you went to, as well as dozens of Chevron gas stations in the states of Baja California Sur and Sinaloa.
Gilberto Gómez, the company’s commercial director, responded by email saying that he was unaware of these types of problems and encouraged him to send him details. “We take very seriously and meticulously following up on these types of complaints,” he wrote in Spanish. “If there is any harm to our customers attributable to the gas station, we fix it.” (I gave you his email address and you told me you would follow up with him.)
But considering the Google reviews at this location and several other (non-Chevron) gas stations in the region, I’m skeptical that Grupo Horizon isn’t aware of the problem. Mr. Gomez did not respond when I asked him twice if he had seen the Google reviews.
I also contacted the Los Cabos Tourism Board. When its general director, Rodrigo Esponda, contacted me, he said that he was “deeply concerned about the situation” and that he had spoken with the Baja California Sur state prosecutor’s office, which told him that he was investigating the matter. He also recommended that tourists who have complaints about a business in the region register them with Mexico’s federal consumer protection body, Profeco.
In the meantime, could the solution simply be to pay cash at Cabo-area gas stations? Unfortunately, no: there are also reports of gas station employees exchanging the large bills customers pay with for smaller ones and demanding more. And don’t even get me started on Tripped Up’s complaints about the poor customer service travelers encounter at car rental agencies near Mexican beach destinations. The best solution for sun worshipers may be to skip the car rental and hire a driver, use car-sharing services, or use public transportation.
If you need advice on the best travel plan gone wrong, email TrippedUp@nytimes.com.
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