Third time not quite the charm

[afuna]

Oh dear.

Apparently my credit card was charged thrice for the same transaction, pushing me over my credit limit. It was an honest mistake -- I was there when they swiped the card, and the system was being unresponsive, so they re-swiped, thinking that something had gone wrong *g* And the third time was because they asked over someone with more experience with the credit card machine. (I paid cash in the end).

I was a bit more amused back when I thought that this would be cancelled with a couple of phone calls and over within a couple of days at most; apparently it will take a letter and at least three weeks (at most a month). *wrinkles nose*

(The merchant is taking care of writing the letter; I just need to wait and pay for it when my credit card bill comes, and then wait for the charge to be debited afterwards)

I'm not at any risk, just inconvenienced! And well, I guess I've now learned something about how all this works.

Comments

[tyggerjai]

Ah. MY wife points out that this may also be a generational thing. I remember when debit cards were first introduced, and many stores wouldn't take them. These days, it's more common for debit cards to be offered by credit card companies, and accepted by merchants just as if they were credit cards, but, as you say, taking the money out of your account. So it might be more common these days to refer to those as credit cards, because they don't have the issues debit cards used to have, when debit cards were a bank thing rather than a credit card company thing.

[ninetydegrees]

Here it works the opposite way. You can use what you call debit cards everywhere but you can't do so with what you call credit cards.

[dreamatdrew]

TEENSY technicality, based upon USA useage.
Modern day it-acts-like-a-credit-card-but-works-like-a-debit-cards are not handled at the Point-Of-Sale as a Debit card. They say so, but they lie, and I've seen the code-guts of a register to prove it.
What you're referring to as a debit card here (at least, if I am reading things correctly) is actually a credit card with an instant billing cycle, and referred to locally as a check card. A true debit card is nowhere near as universally accepted, and is directly tied to the bank, as in "Must Verify With Bank Before Processing". A check card, if the server is unable to contact the bank, works with it's last-known-good data, which is why you can get an overdraft even if you have a block on such things on your account.

[tyggerjai]

That sounds about right. What I would call a debit card is your "true debit card", kids today use debit card to refer to "credit card with instant billing cycle" or check card. And the check card would be one of the things ninetydegrees refers to above as a credit card, which makes sense.