I'm a victim of fraud, and Payoneer's response has been slow, unsympathetic and confusing

jmh

On Sunday Sept 1st, I started to get a series of emails from Payoneer's card risk usage department, asking if I had authorised a number of transactions. I replied, saying no to all of them, because it wasn't me who made the transactions - someone had somehow gotten hold of my card number and used it to make fraudulent purchases in the USA (I am not in America, and have never been to America). Alarmed, I changed my password, but that didn't help. The criminal continued to make these purchases, each involving hundreds of US dollars, until my balance went down to zero. All in all, over $2000 was stolen. I contacted customer service the first thing on Monday morning and explained that I'd been a victim of fraud, so the incidents were logged on the system and my card was cancelled.

The response I eventually got in my email from Payoneer, two days later, seemed impersonal and uncaring, and explained nothing about what was going to happen, even though I had flagged these transactions as fraudulent the very same day they were made. No sympathy for my situation was expressed.

Worried about the slow response and seeming lack of interest or concern from Payoneer, I personally contacted the merchants from whom the fraudulent purchases had been made, and they, thankfully, were extremely helpful. The merchant from whom the bulk of the fraudulent transactions (about $1500 in total) was made agreed to refund all of them.

However, the second merchant I spoke to, on the 3rd September, who was also very helpful, said that while they had logged the transactions as fraud, they needed Payoneer to handle the reversing of the funds. When I got hold of this merchant on the 3rd September, it was the first they'd heard of these transactions being fraudulent! Why had a Payoneer representative not looked into this immediately, considering the large amount in question?!

I understand that these things take time, and a certain number of processes need to be followed, but as I mentioned, very little about what was going to happen was explained to me, and nobody from Payoneer reached out to me and expressed sympathy for being a victim of this crime. $2000 is no small amount, and I've been extremely stressed and worried for days now about how and when I'm going to get this money back. I contacted chat support again only to be told "the chargeback department is dealing with it". I emailed the Payoneer representative from customer support, asking them to please contact the second merchant so that the funds could be returned, only to get a confusing, impersonal response much later in the day.

I still don't actually know what is happening with this stolen money. Considering that I've been a Payoneer customer for years, I would have thought that someone would have reached out to me and that a clear explanation of what was going to happen would be given to me, and at the very least that some sympathy would be expressed at the loss of a very large sum of money due to fraud. All in all this has been a very, very disappointing response and handling of this situation on Payoneer's part.

KazPayoneer

Hi there. I'm very sorry to hear about this instance, it seems very unusual the way it was handled.

Please send me a private message so that I can check and see what the update and next steps are.