Facebook unwarranted charges to debit card

Skipsonrecord

Wondering if anyone can help in my fight against Facebook/NatWest in getting a very small refund on charges via Google Pay. Last month I received two charges to my personal bank account from Facebook ads (just under £15 in total). I don't have Facebook/Meta payments connected to this bank account in any way, and the only time I have ever used Facebook ads was in a previous job around 5 years ago, using a pre-paid business card. There are no transactions on my Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp accounts, not under purchases or via ads manager since 2022. NatWest cancelled my card on the day the charges were made, but claimed the they were legitimately from Facebook and I would need to take it up with their customer service team to get a refund. Facebook were pretty quick in responding, and confirmed the transactions were an error on their part and appeared to be suspicious. They walked me through how to make my account more secure and promised a full refund on the two charges within 9 working days. A day later I received a £6 refund to my bank account (both charges were over £7). It's been 15 days since and I've received no further refund, so I contacted the customer service department once again, only for them to tell me that I made a legitimate purchase and they cannot refund me. NatWest is also refusing to refund the charges as they can't prove any fraudulent activity has taken place. Has anyone been unfortunate enough to experience this? And if so, how did you get it sorted?

Ectophile

Make a formal complaint to NatWest.  Point out the message from Facebook confirming that the charges were erroneous.

born_again

Ask to speak to their fraud team. Advise FB said not yours. So will they treat them as fraud & refund the balance to your account. If not as above raise a complaint.
Wonder if the difference is due to exchange rate?

Skipsonrecord

born_again said:

Ask to speak to their fraud team. Advise FB said not yours. So will they treat them as fraud & refund the balance to your account. If not as above raise a complaint.
Wonder if the difference is due to exchange rate?

I think it might be, the charges came out as euros so there was obviously a transaction charge by NatWest. They were 7€ then 8€ charges.

sheramber

so I contacted the customer service department once again, only for them to tell me that I made a legitimate purchase and they cannot refund me.

Was that Facebook who told you the purchase was legitimate?

Skipsonrecord

sheramber said:

so I contacted the customer service department once again, only for them to tell me that I made a legitimate purchase and they cannot refund me.

Was that Facebook who told you the purchase was legitimate?

In a way. They had originally stated they "detected suspicious activity on my account that resulted in purchases [I] did not make." Then stated they'd issued a refund for those fraudulent purchases, and if I hadn't received a refund within 9 days to contact them again. Upon contacted them again they said "Because our records do not indicate suspicious activity on your account, we are unable to refund your purchase in this case." I then sent screenshots of the previous above message from Facebook and received this response "At this time we are unable to further assist with this issue. Please refer to previous correspondence." I've since sent in another complaint to Facebook customer service which resulted in my account being shut down due to suspicious activity, but upon getting back in their AI has completely misunderstood my message and thought I was reporting my account as hacked.

Skipsonrecord

Result: NatWest have provided a full refund! They coined it as a "good will gesture" because they reckon I've clicked on a Facebook ad and activated my Google Pay, even though I checked my activity around the time the payments were made and I hadn't been on Facebook for several days, or Instagram for several hours before the transactions were made. Facebook also claimed the transactions were purchases made via Facebook business to create ads. I do work in social media, but my company don't have a Facebook account and although we have a business account for Instagram, this also has no active adverts ran (or ever run) through the account as it's fairly new. Definitely a scam, but NatWest aren't interested in reporting it as such, and I honestly can't think of a single reason why this would be... (Not looking for serious answers, I'm being factitious)

born_again

Instagram & Facebook are both owned by Meta. So maybe they have moved billing under one description?

In cases such as this (card fraud) banks do not report to police etc.
All that is done is a (Fraud) chargeback to claim the funds back from the retailer. Retailer then has a right to provide the details of the transaction to the bank. So might get name or username, address, ip etc. So any reporting further has to be done by retailer, as they are the ones losing out.

cw_2377

How can FB say the charges were incorrect one minute, and then correct the next? I'd just keep pursuing them using their own response as your argument.