I feel like I should know the answer to this, but the definitions in Reg E are making me doubt my thought process.

Customer receives phone call from someone pretending to be her service provider. They state that they need her to make a payment so they can fix her computer. She proceeds to give them her debit card number over the phone and they charge her account accordingly. She then thinks that this was a scam and calls her service provider who informs her it was indeed a scam.

Who has liability?

She clearly authorized the charge, but the authorization was given under false pretenses- so can't she claim fraud?

I am reading the commentary to Reg E: 3. Access device obtained through robbery or fraud. An unauthorized EFT includes a transfer initiated by a person who obtained the access device from the consumer through fraud or robbery.

So would we now be on the hook for this charge?

"... through fraud or ...."

And therein lies your answer. It's a valid Reg E claim that the transaction was not authorized, and, if you believe the customer's story, you are obliged to refund the money.

Whether there is a Visa/MasterCard rule affording you an opportunity to recover the loss is something I'll leave to someone else to comment on.

Thank you- very helpful!

FWIW we have been getting numerous calls at home to "fix my windows machine".

When we state that we only have apple and android we get a nasty comment.

The person has a heavy accent. When I looked it up this has been going around since 2008.

My mom got a similar call from someone stating that if they didn't upgrade their computer that they could be victims of identity theft. She let him prattle on for a bit and then told him that they didn't have a computer (they don't). He got frustrated and hung up on her.

I get such calls regularly. Invariably, there's no one on the line at the moment I answer the call. That's a clear suggestion there's an autodialer and call distributor in the mix. The other two characteristics for almost all of these calls is lots of background noise (sweatshop full of gnomes making these calls, without dividers or other acoustic barriers), and -- at the risk of type-casting this discussion -- heavily accented English reminiscent of foreign-outsourced tech support. Do the scammers really think the accent and background chatter make the call sound legit?

Combine those three characteristics -- delayed pickup, background noise, and the accent -- and it takes me about half a second to hang up.

John - based on the number of people continuing to get scammed, I would say yes, not only do the scammers think it sounds legit, so do the people fallling for the scam.

I get the "windows" calls regularly. If I am in the right mood, I will mess with them for a while. I had one guy on hold for 20 minutes one time. I give them random responses like: Caller: please click on Start, blah blah blah and tell me what you see. Me: Spaghetti with meat sauce. Caller: I am sorry, what? Me: Chicken soup. Eventually they get frustrated and hang up.