Complaining to Discover Customer Service

Have you had a Discover Financial Services credit card for years that was closed without your knowledge?  Have you been unfairly charged for unauthorized or fraudulent activity on your credit card? Did unauthorized charges cause you to exceed your limit and incur overdraft or late fees?  Did you temporarily suspend your account for financial reasons only to find out that your request was never processed? Have you tried calling customer service for help only to be turned away, shifted between departments, or put on hold for a long time?

If this sounds like your experience with Discover Financial Services, you aren’t alone.  Customers routinely complain about the level of customer service that they receive. Some of the most common customer complaints include:

1. Closed accounts without notification
2. Being charged for fraudulent or unauthorized activity
3. Suspended accounts not reinstated

Closed accounts

If you have a card through Discover Financial Services and don’t use it on a regular basis, you may find that it is closed without your knowledge.  Discover claims that all states, aside from California, do not require them to notify their customers when their accounts are closed. Customers often report frustrations when they attempt to use their cards and were never notified that the account was no longer open.  In most cases, Discover will not reinstate the card. Rather, a customer needs to reapply and may be asked to submit a significant amount of personal documentation even though they already had an account with Discover.

In other cases, customers report that their credit lines were dropped significantly due to the non-usage of their Discover card.  They are usually unaware that their credit limit has been reduced until they attempt to use their card.

Fraudulent activity

A common complaint of customers who report fraudulent activity on their account is that Discover may not reverse the unauthorized activity.  Customers may be stuck with charges that they didn’t make, plus incur late fees when their account was in dispute. They often report that Discover sides with the vendor, rather than supporting their customer.  In some cases, Discover will only consider a fraudulent charge reversal if the customer files and submits a police report to them.

Suspended accounts not reinstated

Discover offers a program that helps those experiencing financial difficulty to temporarily suspend their account and pay a small amount of interest to maintain their credit.  As long as the customer makes the monthly interest payments timely, Discover will reinstate the account after six months. However, customers report that reinstatement is not automatic, nor guaranteed.  A review of the account must take place before it can be reinstated, which can take up to a month to complete. Customers complain that they were not advised that they would not be able to access their cards until the review is done.  In addition, a common grievance is the frequent shifting of their phone calls between different departments when they try to get their account reinstated. In other cases, customers received misinformation about their accounts being suspended temporarily.  This caused them to pay in less than what they anticipated, causing them to be late and impacting their credit.

Are you a Discover Financial Service customer who is tired of trying to resolve a problem with no success?  Are you being charged fees that are unfair and causing financial hardship? If you’ve tried everything that you can think of and are just getting nowhere, consider filing a claim through FairShake.  We help consumers who have been unsuccessful in resolving their complaints with Discover Financial Services. If you’re stuck and need help dealing with Discover Financial Services, learn how FairShake can help you.