Fraudulent Charge
Complaint
A. Maurelli
Country: United States
I recently realized that I was being billed $12.95 from MNI Credit Reporting on a monthly basis. I have NEVER used an online reporting tool for my credit score. Even scarier, there seems to be hundreds of complaints regarding this company throughout the web. After calling them and being put on hold for over 30 minutes, I decided to try again with similar results. It appears that this company steal your information, and then you can't reach them to cancel the billing. If the charge is recurring your credit card company can not get your money back - they deem it as user negligence. Proceed with MNI and FreeCreditReport.com with caution - They are a slippery group of thieves!
Comments
When I contacted Experian, they were not helpful. They told me I had no active accounts and had nothing in my name.
I definitely learned my lesson about purchases online AND the auto-forward from Visa.
14 May 2012
So same situation, $19.95 charge found on my account. Called the number on the charge, spoke to a woman who asked typcial private information questions. I asked her where she was and she said Phillipines, hmmmm. I assumed fraud right away, talked to her for a bit longer and she said she was going to reimburse my account $59.85 which really made me concerned. Why would they give me three times the money back. Hung up and called the bank, canceled my cards. Crazy thing is that they did reimburse my account the sixty bucks which really throws me off? Called the bank to let them know and waiting a response. Did anyone every get money reimbursed from Experian. If so, what happen next?
I came across this site after doing a Google search when I received a mysterious 14.95 charge from Experian.
Since some people seem to have had the same experience, I wanted to share my situation since it turned out to be identity theft.
I ended up speaking with the fraud department at Experian and my Bank and they said that what happened was that someone got my debit card info and made the charge to Experian. The reason thieves do this is to get access to your credit report which will list all of your credit cards as well as other personal info.
Experian is going to refund the charge and my bank put a hold on my debit card. Both my bank and Experian were very helpful and they said that unfortunately this is getting to be more common.
I hope this helps for those of you had the same thing happen. The bank said that checking your online statements every few days for unauthorized charges and changing your debit card PIN number every few months can help.
transaction information on the two
Recur Purchase with ATM card EXPERIAN *CREDITREP 8 CA
Card purchase authorization EXPERIAN *FRE
Well, called customer service for my bank who put me in touch with a claims representative. Together we conference-called Experian who asked for my card number and my full name which I provided. The name on the two accounts opened with Experian was not my own nor someone I knew, which I confirmed with Experian. Experian put me through to a supervisor who blocked the account then refunded my money along with confirmation numbers. The entire process took about 20 minutes. Once the pending refunds get through, I'm going into my local branch to obtain a new debit card number and canceling my previous.
Be sure to call the bank first if there is ever a problem with your bank account! They will speed you through the phone-system red-tape which companies like Experian prefer to use.
Credit card was very helpful put me on a 3-way call with Experian...who asked several questions and then told me someone named Patricia M. had looked up her credit report. I said, so I should change my card number...she said I can't give you any advice but I would do a credit report to make sure no other charges were made...I said if you know who did this credit search on my credit card can't you charge them with fraud...I mean you must have all of her information through her credit report...they said they could not....
It all sounds like a fishy scam to me by Experian...I am not too worried because there are no other charges on my credit card and the said they did not obtain our credit report...so it has nothing to do with them getting my other account numbers...but I did change our charge number so they can not charge anything else...Experian refunded my money and said they have blocked the account...I said why can't you do more since this a fraudulent charge and they said it might have been a mistake or sometimes people say they don't know the persona and they do...
In any event, this is what happened to me...how it helps