Discover Card - Account Guard charged 10% of balance - upset with Discover Card charges

# 2 for May 14, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on May 13, 2003:

From: Tina Simmons [Email User]

RE: Discover Card - Account Guard charged 10% of balance - upset with Discover Card charges

Discover Card has a service that they offer customers: Account Guard. It is designed to protect you in the event that you lose your job or somehow unable to pay your bill. They also charge 10% of your balance from the moment you activate the service. I was laid off from my job and activated my Account Guard service. I found a job 2 months after activation and formally cancelled Account Guard on February 2nd of this year. I even received a cancellation letter from Account Guard. My February billing statement came back ok, no Account Guard charges, as it should be. However, the charges appeared, without my consent, on March's statement. I immediately called both Discover and Account Guard to get the charges and associated finance charges removed and refunded back to my account. They refunded the Account Guard charges but not the finance charges. I had to call again to get that taken care of. I also requested that my name and account be removed from any of Discover's solicitation lists. I checked my statement online and saw that Account Guard charged me again two weeks after I got the refund! I called Discover again and this time they were not helpful. I was told that I cancelled the service in February and that Account Guard only credited February's charges and "there was nothing they could do. I would have to talk to Account Guard." I was furious! How can any company just charge, pardon me: STEAL, money, from my credit card at random? A more accurate question is, why is my own credit card company making unauthorized charges to my account? This is scary because I feel like if Discover is not willing to help me with this, would they be there if someone stole my credit card? This is the third time this has happened with one of Discover's "affiliates". I've been a customer with Discover since 1995, I won't be for much longer.