Is there a rule that a merchant must identify themself when making a charge
Recently I sent several credit card payments online. The company that charged my card is a multi-billion dollar company, so not just a small start-up. However on the statements the charges appeared as a bunch of random letters and numbers for the description and location. All other merchants that have ever charged this card appear correctly on the bill.
Since I make probably 30-50 transactions on my card each month, I had no idea who these charges were from, so I disputed them with my card issuing bank and reported the card as stolen. After the company received the dispute, they contacted me and are basically blaming me for not having matched up the amount charged with what my bill from them was.
So my question is, is there any sort of regulation (e.g. PCI) or law that says that a merchant must attempt to properly identify themself when charging their clients' credit cards?
Edit:
I think some people were a bit confused about this question thinking that the charge shows up with the name of an umbrella corporation, or third party, but it is literally a bunch of random characters. Here's a screenshot of the bill:
The third column is the "description" (where the company name usually goes) and the fourth column is the "location". Only one company shows up like this when they make charges to the card.
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In some case the customer wants the name to be cryptic or misleading. They don't want to advertise the true nature of the business they visited.
In other cases the transaction may be reported through another business. A few years ago the local PTA was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. A local business allowed the PTA to use their credit card reader to process transactions over a certain amount. Of course when the credit card statement arrived it looked like you spent 0 at the florist.
I have seen PayPal listed when donating to some small charities.
I have noted another case where confusion can occur. I used a debit card to buy a soda from a vending machine: the name and location were the name of the vending machine company and the location of their main office. It didn't say soda machine city A. It said Joe's vending company city B.
In most cases the business and the credit card company want to make it easy to identify the transactions to keep the cost of research and charge backs to a minimum.
Here's an excerpt from VISA's Card Acceptance Guidelines for Visa Merchants (PDF)
Merchant Name
The merchant name is the single most important factor in cardholder
recognition of transactions. Therefore, it is critical that the
merchant name, while reflecting the merchant’s “Doing Business As”
(DBA) name, also be clearly identifiable to the cardholder. This can
minimize copy requests resulting from unrecognizable merchant
descriptors.
Merchant applications typically list the merchant name as the merchant
DBA. This may differ from the legal name (which can represent the
corporate owner or parent company), and may differ from the owner’s
name which, for sole proprietorships, may reflect the business owner.
Keep in mind that the purpose of the merchant name is to identify the merchant to the cardholder.
Work with your acquirer to ensure your name is clear and discernible to cardholders when they read their statement.
To verify that you are using the merchant name that is most recognizable to the cardholder, compare the merchant name that you
want to use to: * Signage in the site photo * Advertisements or
brochures, and/or * A telephone directory listing
I think that the key statement above is "Therefore, it is critical that the
merchant name [...] be clearly identifiable to the cardholder." Since this merchant was not clearly identifiable to the cardholder, they are in breach of a critical point in these guidelines.
This is from VISA, but I would assume that all other major credit cards would have similar guidelines for their merchants. However keep in mind that these are "guidelines", and not (necessarily) rules.
Obviously, the credit card's administators know who this charge was submitted by. Contact them, tell them that you don't recognize the charge, and ask them to tell you who it was from. If they can't or won't, tell them you suspect fraud and want it charged back, then wait to see who contacts you to complain that the payment was cancelled.
Note that you should charge back any charge you firmly believe is an error, if attempts to resolve it with the company aren't working. Also note that if you really ghink this is fraud, you should contact your bank and ask them to issue a new card number.
Standard procedures exist. Use them when appropriate.
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