Double Charged with Laser Card

delos

Hi - I'm looking for a wee bit of advice here

I used my laser card last Friday in a restaurant and I've noticed that I've been double charged. Now I remember the card was declined on the first attempt - I think I hit two keys simultanously - but I'm kind of surprised that I've been billed twice. It might have to do with the error but I would have thought that would have been corrected by now.

The strange thing is that I used my card in another restaurant yesterday and I seem to have been billed twice for that too. The two restaurants are owned and managed by the same guy but I'll chalk that down to coincidence.

I was just wondering if this sort of thing is common (never seen it before) and how long I should leave this before following it up? Should my first port of call be the retailers or the bank?

Thanks

Random

Follow this up straight away. Report it to the restaurant and to the card company and follow throught from there.

Davy

Has happened me in the past with laser. I printed of the online transactions showing it billed twice, went back to the shop and refund their and then. No need for dealing with slow banks

chris85

this happened to me last month when first transaction was declined. I rang my bank, BOI, and was told it will be refunded within 2-3 days and that all declined transaction show on the acct and then get refunded. Sounded a bit strange to me but it did get refunded.

oldyouth

Paid for oil delivery over the phone once by Laser. Some weeks later I was trawling through my account on the internet and saw the 2 deductions were made for different amounts to the oil company. When I rang them I was told 'ah sure we must have had a few accounts on the desk and put someone else's bill through on your card'.
Now I'm well used to hearing lies in my line of work but this was too blatant and they just credited my account with no trace of remorse or sincere apology.

MsUnderhill

We've had this happen at work at several times, some times it is just a case of human error, if your transaction is over the phone then the numbers have to be keyed in manually and in very busy periods occasionally duplications have occured though since changing our system this is very rare. In any case duplications should always be caught by comparing the end of day receipts with the till.

The other issue is unreliability of the actual machines. We used to have no problems with our machines until they were upgraded for chip and pin and now we have regular issues with them, for example, a couple months ago two machines inexplicably powering down mid transaction at the same time. We rang the bank to make sure that the transactions hadn't went through and they said definitely not and to put them through again which we did. Result: both customers were double charged and very irate with us about it! And then the exact same thing happened barely a week later.

We've also had instances were a transaction has come up on the machine display as 'authorised' but then the receipt prints out as 'void' despite have pressed nothing to void it! In that instance we have to go ahead and do the transaction again and hope that it won't be charged twice.

In short while I can understand why you might be suspicious at being double charged it is often a case of machine or human error and not a case of someone trying to con you. Simplest and quickest thing to do is contact the seller rather than your bank - just remember that you need to have your card to hand for them to issue a refund.