I live in a country outside of the US. My mom (from the US) came to visit me recently and we got scammed when making a purchase.
She needed some medication from the pharmacy, so we ordered a delivery order from pretty much the most reputable pharmacy that exists here.
The delivery driver arrived and my wife went downstairs to retrieve the order and pay. It all seemed fairly innocuous until my wife came back upstairs and we had my mom double-check she was charged correctly.
Lo and behold — the charge was for almost $900 and it was supposed to be around $250. We thought maybe it was just the authorization amount and when it posted it would be the correct amount, like when you get gas.
A few hours later, the pharmacy called us to ask if we had ever received our order. It turns out that the delivery driver (their employee) had never marked the order as delivered, nor did they ever return to the store. The pharmacy concluded their employee scammed both the store, as well as us. The employee used their own fake payment terminal to obtain the payment from us and actually delivered the medication, so the store was never paid either.
We obtained from the pharmacy, in writing, an acknowledgment as to what occurred and they accepted fault, but mentioned that because they had never actually collected money from us our recourse would be with our bank, Capital One.
Capital One for some reason is making this into a huge ordeal and won’t refund the money in any capacity. I advised my mom to call and have them set up the dispute so she didn’t improperly enter any information. The support person set it all up for her and then they DENIED her claim like a day later, for some asinine reason that doesn’t even make sense. They said the dispute was filed until the wrong category and therefore, it didn’t apply to our situation and was rejected — except for the fact their own customer support person did that and not us so why blame my mom?
Then, she managed to get the case reopened by appealing. They immediately rejected her dispute on the grounds that since she received a product there was no fraud. Never mind the fact she was charged almost $900 for something with a price that would’ve been barely $250. She is now around 6 hours into arguing with them over multiple days and they’re fully attempting not to refund her in any capacity, even though she’s been a customer for 40 years and was literally robbed and has a letter from the company apologizing for the situation and stating to contact my bank for a refund since they’re physically incapable of providing a refund since they never received money.
This is utterly ridiculous and I can’t believe I’m having to appeal to Reddit for assistance in figuring something out before my mom gets robbed of over $600 she never intended on spending.
Does anyone maybe have any advice or know a way to escalate this beyond the normal channels which are getting her nowhere?