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This one made me angry. Not because of the amount of money, which is small, but because of the principle of the thing.
We spent the last night of our recent vacation in the Balley’s Hotel on the Las Vegas ’strip’. When it came to paying the bill, the young lady behind the counter had a problem with processing my credit card and she thought the transaction hadn’t gone through. So she tried again in a different terminal and succeeded. And then, don’t ask me how, she discovered that the first transaction had worked after all so performed a third transaction to refund the first payment.
All was well. Until I received my Visa statement. There were the three transactions. Two payments of £50.31* and one refund of… er… £47.51. And the refund transaction was dated four days after the payments. That’s a difference of £2.80 plus four days interest! Now I know that this is down to exchange rate bargaining over buy and sell prices but come on. That’s just outright theft. And, on principle, I am quite determined to get it back.
*Where on earth in the United Kingdom can you get a hotel room that measures something approaching 500 square feet; has the most enormous bed you can imagine; 2 armchairs as well as a table and chairs; a separate loo and bidet; separate shower room AND a sunken bath for the princely sum of £50.31 a night? I’ll take bets that when Manchester (or wherever) gets it’s bloody ’super casino’ you wont be able to get a hotel room for twice that, and that one will be the size of a cupboard!
1) Sum of 3 + 5 ? Is that a WordPress Widget? Please do tell me!
I would feel the same way. Something like this, happened to me. I’m still upset about it.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a transaction in my checking account for $400. Almost all of our transactions are either online banking, or ATM withdrawals. So right away this transaction looked funny. It said “Customer Withdrawal”.
I asked my husband if he had withdrawn $400. (I would have killed him for doing that without asking me.) He said no.
It was dated Monday, and it was Sunday. So I assumed the transaction took place sometime Saturday afternoon, evening or Sunday very early.
I called the bank and it turned out to be a transaction AT a branch. Only this branch, was in Atlanta. We live in NY. I asked for this to be investigated, as we did not make this transaction. Also, since we live on a pretty tight budget, this emptied out our checking account. Luckily, I had some money put aside in our savings account.
So the bank said we would “get a letter” within 5 business days, but most likely, it would be cleared up by Monday afternoon. On Monday, I call and nothing has changed. Again on Tuesday. I call on Wednesday, this time using key words that customer service reps are trained to red flag, “Dissatisfied with my customer service experience”.
I got a vigilent individual on the phone who promised to help me out with this after I explained that I had already spoken to the bank on three prior occassions. He apologized profusely for putting me on hold and I replied that I would stay on hold all day if it were going to resolve my issue.
It turned out, that it was a typo, initiated by the bank teller in the branch, and my money was refunded to me within a few hours.
In the meantime, I was out my money for three entire business days. This is a bank that charges you for everything, $3.00 for “excessive transactions”, $5.00 for this, $30 for that. The way I see things, I should have gotten a bit of interest on my account, even if it were a few cents.
And you know what happened next?
I got a response from my email inquiry that I initiated on that Sunday…. not a few days later, but 21 days later. And in the email, then recommended I fill out a fraud report and put in a claim with the police. Oh how infuriating!
I wrote them back that the problem had already been resolved, but that 21 days is far too long to get back to a customer about money the bank owes them, and that when they do so, the information should at least be accurate!
This is the point where I switch banks I’m afraid. Here in the UK I have started to use an internet bank for just about all my needs and so far (fingers crossed) it is working out well plus I get a good repsonse to queries. Move on!
The ’spam math check’ is a plugin that can be found on this plugin page. Nice and simple and fairly effective…
Imagine if they did this to all there clients once a year mmm pretty sure that would millions. It reminds me of Richard Prior in one of the Superman movies where he takes out cents out of all the accounts and ends up a millionaire.
An d didn’t Pryor play the scene well when he found out how much he’d got?