‘Absurd’: CBA slugged 13 years of fees for inactive card

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.

The address on file for the customer’s business was correct up to 2013, though the bank conceded some of the subsequent cards might have been sent to an outdated address after the man had failed to update his business details.

When his business was active, the customer had several different accounts relating to the various businesses he was running and claims he did not notice the $80 charges over the years, despite having no memory of receiving the cards.

The bank’s realisation it had charged the man for years prompted its customer service representatives to offer him a “final settlement” of $1040, representing a refund on the annual card fees for the past 13 years.

Still frustrated, the customer asked the bank if it had checked if his case was isolated, or if it could also be charging other customers for cards they didn’t receive or activate.

“If this has happened to me, how many other people are affected by this incompetence and absurd conduct?” he said. “It’s sheer incompetence, and my issue is not about the money, but about how many other people have fallen for this.”

CBA said it would consider making its fee-transaction descriptions clearer in response to his feedback, which it said would “be passed on to the relevant business area for consideration”.

However, the bank stood by the voluntary regulatory code for electronic payment facilities that allows it to continue charging customers annual fees for credit cards that have not been activated.

“Records provided through the direct debit dispute process confirmed that authority had been established for payments to be debited from the account, meaning the transaction did not meet the definition of an unauthorised transaction under the ePayments Code,” the bank told the customer.

In response to questions about the case, a CBA spokeswoman said “the annual fees applied to the corporate card facility were correctly charged, in accordance with the facility’s terms and conditions”.

She called the $1040 payment a “gesture of goodwill and in recognition of his customer experience”, rather than the “compensation” the bank’s customer service team had called it.

The bank also said the $80 annual charge related to two $40 fees for two cards currently issued to the business account.

While the complainant had not made a transaction in at least seven years – as far back as CBA maintains internal records – the bank said another cardholder had made a transaction on their card as recently as May 2024.

“The card issued in your name attached to the facility, continued to be visible through CommBiz,” it told the man, referring to its business account portal. “A second authorised cardholder remained attached to the facility and continued using the account. Transactions continued to occur on the facility, most recently in May 2024.”

CBA said five different cardholders had been attached to the company account at various points over the past 20 years, but the bank was unable to provide details of the exact dates any additional cardholders were active.

When asked if charging an annual fee for a card that the bank had destroyed amounted to fees for no service, the spokeswoman said there was absolutely no error in the charges. “The fees are charged annually based on the number of requested cards, even if they are not being used,” she said, noting “a card can be easily closed on request from the customer”.

CBA did not respond to questions about whether it had investigated whether it was more broadly charging its customers fees for payment cards they had never received beyond this specific customer’s case.

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Elias Visontay is a National Consumer Affairs Reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.AdvertisementAdvertisement