You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
The Commonwealth Bank charged a customer 13 years of fees for an unactivated credit card, and failed to realise that it was responsible for taking the money when the man got in touch after spotting the charges.
CBA defended its practices by arguing it had a right to keep charging the customer even if he did not receive his physical card in the mail because it was still linked to his account, and said other people had access to the account with their own cards for at least some of the period.
But in a case with echoes of the “fees for no service” scandal that hit Australia’s banks a decade ago, the primary account holder – who spoke on condition of anonymity – has no record of receiving his card since it was cancelled in 2010 after a disputed transaction.
The annual charges became apparent to the man in late July, years after he had sold or closed several small businesses, but kept the underlying company account. When he questioned the bank about an $80 debit that had been taken from a transaction account described as “Direct Debit 001192 CBA CR CARD PMNT”, CBA was unable to identify the merchant responsible for the charge.
After an investigation that took several days, the bank rejected his disputed transaction claim on August 3.
CBA determined the man had authorised the charge, and told him to pursue any further complaints about the $80 deduction with the merchant directly. However, the bank could not identify the merchant.
It was only after a complaint was lodged about the lack of clarification of merchant details revealed in the dispute decision that a customer service representative subsequently determined it was CBA that had been deducting the charges.
At this point, CBA said the $80 charge was an annual fee for a corporate credit card facility.
The customer, however, had no idea he had a corporate credit card.
Details provided by CBA confirm that a card for the account was most recently sent out to the customer’s former business address in 2025, but had been undeliverable, returned to sender “and was subsequently destroyed”.
The bank acknowledged this, and offered the customer an $80 refund. Before accepting, he asked when the annual charges had begun.
A CBA investigation into the corporate credit account found it had been started in 2006. The card had been cancelled in 2010, after a separate disputed transaction.
On August 13 this year, the bank told the customer in an email that the card had probably expired in 2013 and “has not been reissued since that time”.
But on August 28, after this masthead put questions to the bank, it emailed the customer again with a different version of events. In fact, it said, the card had been reissued every three years, beginning in 2013.
