Unauthorized Transactions with Capital One’s Debit Card – How to Dispute and How Long Does It Take?

Just a few days ago, I logged in to my Capital One 360 Checking Account and was terrified when seeing some strange transactions there. There are two charges from Walmart with description “Debit Card Purchase – Walmart Grocery 8009666546 AR”. Obviously, these transactions were unauthorized because I’ve never shopped for groceries at Walmart and I put this card away for nearly 6 months.

Someone might have stolen the card info when I used it a long time ago and now started spending my money. He bought groceries from Walmart so he could pick up and avoid revealing his address. I looked up for ways to dispute these transactions and Capital One actually makes it quite easy on its Online Banking page. I just went to my checking account, click on the fraudulent transaction to expand it and click on “Report a Problem” to start a dispute process. Capital One will ask you to confirm you didn’t make this purchase, it is not made by other authorized account users, and not a subscription or recurring transaction.

After following the instructions, the system automatically disabled my current debit card and mail me a new one. In the meantime, it told me the dispute process had started and I could expect a response within 10 business days.

A few hours later, I received their first system-generated email:

We’re working on the claim you filed for your account ending in **** on */**/2021 for $***.00. Your claim number is ********** and we’ll be in touch when our review is finished. If you have any questions, give us a call at 1-866-536-9023. We’re here 7 days a week from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET

Then they sent another mail after about 10 hours saying they sent me temporary credit:

We’re investigating your disputed transaction(s). In the meantime, we deposited a temporary credit into your account on **/**/2021, for $***.00. This money is immediately available, but may be removed as a result of our investigation.

We’ll also reimburse you for any related interest, finance charges and/or fees within one business day. This reimbursement will be reflected in your account transaction history and on your monthly statement.

We may contact you if we need additional info and we’ll be in touch with the outcome of our investigation.

The law requires card issuers to resolve the dispute within 60 days, so I still need to wait until they complete the investigation to know if I will really receive the refunds. Capital One said that their customers are never held responsible for unauthorized charges with $0 fraud liability, therefore, I am quite confident they could detect the fraud. I will update this post once I receive more responses from the bank.

Update 1: It’s been 5 weeks and I’m still waiting for Capital One’s final decision. The credits I received are just temporary.

Update 2: Finally the dispute has been resolved nearly 2 months later. I received their email saying “Good news! We finished investigating your dispute(s). Any temporary credits we deposited in your account are now permanent, and your dispute has been resolved.”