A woman says she was mistakenly charged $115,000 on her Discover credit card during a Sephora sale.
Emma Kate (@emmmakattte) says in a TikTok video that’s been viewed over 1.3 million times that after shopping at Sephora, she checked her Discover credit card statement to find out her order totaling $592.87 was charged over a hundred times, resulting in approximately $115,000 in payments to Sephora.
@emmmakattte Replying to @shelsandgracie #greenscreen update on the sephora mess up!!! #sephora ♬ original sound – emma kate
Emma says that once a Sephora representative contacted her, they informed her they would be comping her original order and giving her a $100 gift card to the store.
In a follow-up that got 178,000 views, Emma says Sephora also agreed to comp some additional orders she made. She acknowledges that “the amount they had charged was astronomical, so this really isn’t equivalent but I do appreciate them working through this with me.” Most importantly, Emma says that, as of Nov. 6, “it does look like my credit card is back to normal.”
While Emma seemed pleased with the outcome, viewers in the comment section let her know they felt she deserved much more as compensation for her time and trouble.
“Sorry we almost destroyed your credit and your time. Here’s enough money for a rollerball and some sheet masks to make it up to you,” one viewer sarcastically said.
“GIRLLL, $100 is not even close to 1% of the total charges they put on your card,” pointed out another.
But some thought that Sephora already went above and beyond by reversing the charges to her Discover card.
“If they are refunding the rest, why are you expecting them to camp other orders? Can’t imagine asking a company to give me more until I’m satisfied…” one person asked. Emma responded by explaining that she wasn’t after Sephora to get more free stuff, but “because I still have 90k of charges on my card and my bill is due next week.”
Emma also made another follow-up video to address the viewers who accused her of being entitled. She says that, as someone who works in brand experience for another large retail company, she knows this is the least Sephora can do. “This isn’t going to impact their bottom line at all, so it really is one of those things where it’s like I might as well just see the most that I can get,” she says.
A number of people in the original post also asked the Sephora shopper why Discover didn’t flag the charges. “Who the hell has that credit limit. It should decline as fraud potential,” asked one person, to which Emma responded saying, “My credit’s only $4,500 it WAY exceeded.”
“Discover allowing your credit card to be charged $117k over your limit is insane. They better honor that cash back,” said another. “CANCEL YOUR DISCOVER CARD,” chimed in a third.
In yet another follow-up post, Emma tells her followers that, thanks to them tagging Discover in the comments of her posts, Discover’s corporate team had reached out to her to assure her that they were going to conduct an internal investigation to understand how her card had been overcharged to such a large extent.
Emma also adds that, since she was only offered $100 back after Discover allowed the Sephora charges that exceeded her credit limit by over $100,000, she would continue to push back because “the fact that I had to deal with all this has been such a headache and just how they handled it was very unprofessional.”
While Emma reiterated to the Daily Dot “this experience has been an absolute headache to deal with,” she said that “it has been so encouraging to see how supportive people on social media have been in tagging both Discover and Sephora to help escalate and bring this to their corporate team’s attention.”
She added that Sephora’s corporate team was “extremely kind and cooperative.” In addition to comping that order and other orders she placed the week before, she said the company gave her a $115 gift card.
“My experience with Discover’s customer service team unfortunately hasn’t been the same,” Emma said. “This past Monday was the first time Discover’s executive team reached out to let me know that they are ‘investigating my concerns,’ I am still waiting to hear back from them.”
“I think my experience should be a lesson to all, reminding people to always check your credit card and bank statements to ensure they are accurate, especially with the holidays coming up and it being such a heavy shopping period,” she added. “This type of overage charge could have severely messed up my credit score, which would have been a whole other headache to then have to deal with.”
Update 9:27am CT, Nov. 10: Discover told the Daily Dot the following in a statement: “We are aware of this situation and per our cardmember agreement, we will be working directly with the cardmember on this issue. Discover takes instances like this seriously and encourage any customer who sees an unauthorized purchase on their account to contact us at 1-800-Discover. Please note, that all Discover cardmembers are protected with our $0 Fraud Liability Guarantee, which means they’re never responsible for unauthorized purchases on their Discover Card account. For more information on Discover’s fraud protections, you can visit here.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Sephora via email.
