Debit Card Fiasco Update

The awful experience of finding my debit card had been charged twice continues. I never heard back from the store on Sunday. So on Monday I called the store the second time and spoke to a different manager. This one looked and couldn't find two charges on his records. He only found one. So at his request I brought down copies of my bank records showing both charges. He believed me and graciously credited back one of the charges. I went home happy and thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't!

When I got home from school today I checked my bank account again expecting to see the charge credited back. It wasn't. I called the store again to see if there was to be some delay in the refund. The manager told me it usually takes about 24 to 48 hours. He asked me to call my bank and see if there was anything coming through. This is where it got horrible.

On contacting the bank I discovered that there wasn't a credit coming through. Instead there was the 3rd time they had tried to run the card and that charge would hit my account tonight. I panicked and asked for the Dispute department. They got on the line and a nice lady told me what was going on. She also told me she didn't see the credit coming in but she could dispute one of the charges for me. I was happy with that idea but also concerned that my account would go overdraft in the mean time. She told me that sometimes companies take a couple of days to credit refunds and sometimes up to 10. That last was totally unacceptable so I asked her if she could call the manager at the store. She said she would. After I gave her the info I had a better idea. Would she set up a 3-way call so that I could talk to him at the same time. She did and he was very gracious about the whole thing. After she explained to him how the 3rd charge would come through tonight, he told me to come down to the store and he would credit the me the other extra charge and hopefully that would take care of matters. I asked the bank lady if they could do anything to insure that my account didn't go overdraft tonight. She said she would make sure that didn't happen. Whew!

We all hung up and I headed straight down to the store. The manager was as good as his word. We both seemed to feel rather sheepish about the whole thing. Refund in hand, I thanked him and left. Home again, I checked my bank records. The lady from the bank had refunded both charges. Whew! My account now has a nice safe balance. The actual transactions will still take a couple of days to hit my bank. No matter how fast electronic banking is, human handling always slows things down. That's fine with me. The manager did his job. The bank lady did hers. I did what I needed to do and am now feeling in control of things somewhat. Yay for knowing who to call and how to deal with this. Boo for having to make 3 trips to the store for one purchase. Oh well, life goes on.