Undercharged but money later taken?

blue_monkey_2

In regard to keeping the details.

I keep card details to do refunds, I am a web trader and process the payments myself as 'cardholder not present'. I keep the merchant receipts which have all details on except the CSV number. I keep them in a locked safe but I still feel uneasy keeping them.

I have to refund back to a card, I cannot give a cash/Bank ransfer/Cheque refund for something that was bought on credit (with a credit card) this is why we have to refund back to the card it was bought from. Otherwise epople could buy £300 of goods with a credit card and have them refunded back to a debit card (this is money laundering, right?).

I am not happy keeping them but I have to else people cannot have a refund. I've been told that I should not keep card details but I am given no other options as the card details are deleted from my Secure Server.

Of course, if it is a refund 'cardholder not present' then the customer is not there to enter the pin number.

It becomes fraud when a merchant takes money that they are not entitled to take.

And the OP has not been overcharged.

Do I keep card details? Yes. But I choose not to use them for fraudulent activity and this is why they want merchants to be PCI complient so that the card companies are not paying for fraudulent activity.

If someone broke into my house and broke into my safe and too them all and used them then I guess I would get in trouble too. But otherwise my customers are not able to have refunds.

Just to add, if I used something like Protx or Barclays Merchant to process my payments they keep all of the card details on their servers, as do the likes of Worldpay, Paypal, Google Checkout, some websites such as Woolworths, eBay, etc... so having thought about this more I am not sure that retailers cannot keep all the card data, just that they must keep it secure and encrypted.

The OP's card has not been used for fraudulent activity as it as the shop was reclaiming the balance. Had they not taken this, could the cardholder be charged with theft for not coming back to the store to pay for the goods they took and agreed to pay for? Hmmmmm.

ispartacus75

blue_monkey wrote: »

Isparticus, if you had been overcharged there would be no need for you to go back into the store and put your hand in the till as yes, this would be theft, you would instead produce your receipts and get your money back this way. As you paid by card you would not be entitled to a cash refund but a refund back to your card so taking the cash would be stealing. So your scenario does not really work.

This is exactly why I put up the scenario. We as consumers are expected to jump through all sorts of hoops to get out money back if we have been overcharged. Make our way back to the store, take in the receipt and argue it out with the shop staff, where as this particular company havent decided to go down that route, they have just helped themselves to the contents of the OP's bank account.

My scenario was to prove a point. The above is the point! So the scenario DOES work. Oh and by the way I never mentioned paying by card.

blue_monkey_2

I know it was to prove a point but the shop did not have the customers home address to go knocking on the door and ask for it. Had she paid for the goods in cash the retailer would have known at the time.

Had the customer been honest she would have offered to repay it - by telephone of course!! But she did not, so if you want to argue the toss, she was being dishonest too.

Had you of paid by cash you would still have to go to the store with your receipt to prove you had been overcharged - and even then you would have to do it by the close of business else the tills would have been cashed up and that would be it, there would be no way of proving it, you could certainly not roll up a day later and say 'you overcharged me by £9 yesterday'.

Of course, there would be no arguing it your card receipt showed something more than your shop receipt.

While you say they have 'helped themselves' they have taken what was owed, the OP agreed to pay £54.

What you are forgetting here is that the bank will ask for the shop receipt to prove the money was taken so they can refund her and then take it out with the shop. The OP already agred to pay £54 on the receipt - there is nothing to give back if the amount the shop has charged is the amount she agreed to pay via the receipt.

I think what you are arguing here is what is MORALLY the right thing to do by either party. Boots and Tesco would probably not have bothered, a small shop that relies on profits to make a living would be bothered. What also would have made a difference is that if the shop had sacked someone for stealing from the till because of the defecit - hence people logging on and off of till - this is why checks are made. It could have even been an employee who cashed up and realised they would get in trouble and then put the additional payment through without knowing the ins and outs. Likewise the customer should have been honest enough to say they had been undercharged and called to make the payment.

If the OP does not ask either the shop or the bank then they will never find out. The problem is then that if the OP asks the bank will wonder why they are asking as they have been charged the £54 they were billed for and agreed to pay.

The question is whether the shop can do it. Then yes, they probably can. The customer wanted to pay £54, she has to argue that she was only authorising £45 and not the full £54 as her receipt states. And if she was only authorising then she is admitting she intended to defraud the shop by £9 by being dishonest.

Swings and roundabouts. We can argue about it until the cows come home but the shop has not defrauded this lady from money. Either way someone was doing something wrong, the customer defrauding the retailer or the retailer 'defrauding' the customer (by taking what was owed to them)!! Both parties had the chance to rectify their situation but only one did so this makes them in the wrong!

joek101

blue_monkey wrote: »

However, the other slant is that the person buying the goods agreed to pay £54 for the goods and that when she authorised that payment she was agreeing to pay £54 without realising she had been undercharged. Could it be that times have overrun for the cut off of the statement being produced, in that the cut off for a business working day is 3pm and if they had process it at 5pm it would go on the next day and then onto the next 'months' statement. The transaction has still been processed the same shop working day though.

However, when she goes to the bank with her receipt and the bank see that the total taken was the same as she agreed to pay there is nothing further to be done.

It is all down to timings here and when the additional payment went through and I think we need to bear this in mind. Everyone is assuming 'a month later' when it could be that the same days taking of the balance went through onto the next statement.

If a retailer is putting payments through to cards willy nilly then they cannot do this and it is fraud and they will get in trouble for this with the bank and the police, however, is it fraud when they take what the customer should have paid but did not due to a mistake? They are simply taking what they are owed.

On the other side though, was it not dishonest of the OP to not go back and point out she had been undercharged for the goods? She would have gone back if she had been overcharged so why not if undercharged? I know we would all do it, but is it honest?

Otherwise could we all not call the bank and say 'Tesco charged me £25 but my receipt only showed £25'. They will need to see the receipt. And the OP's receipt showed £54, not £45.
quote]

In response to some of the points above

1. The payment was made on debit card, the transactions were dated apporx 1 month apart, the concept of them putting a transaction thro before or after 3pm and it being on the next statement is therefore not correct. They have obviously put through the second payment several weeks after the first.

2. Re the receipts and the amounts taken. As mentioned before I don't believe this is sufficient evidence. I have, on a very rare occasion, paid for goods as a combination of cash and card payment, and so for the bank to accept two receipts as evidence to process a second payment is unacceptable. Im sure most people have been out for a group meal where most will put in cash and someone might put their share on a card, so as the restaurant owner may then have a debit card receipt for £30 and a food bill for £150, whats to stop them processing another £120 in this case?

3. Everyone keeps mentioning how dishonest I am and how the retailer is entitled to the full amount. And I'm not begrudging them the money or have any wish to try and claim it back, my issue is with the bank processing the payment, not the shop for taking it, if i'd have been them I'd have probably gone for it aswell.

blue_monkey_2

This is why you need to speak to the bank j, please do it to find out where you stanbd and let us know what they say. None of us know for sure so it would be interesting to find out. I don't think you are dishonest, you were doing what a most of us would do and that is the truth, I was simply pointing out one arguement against the other.

Call the bank and ask them if they can do it after so long. As I say, as a retailer, had I spotted it the same day then I'd have done it but a month apart, then no I would not of. Maybe the shop is in financial difficulty and their accountant picked it up at the end of the month.

We can all speculate but without you making that call I guess we will never know for sure what the answer is.

Cornholio_2

So what happened ? I bought just over a £100 of fencing materials on debit card last Friday, and on checking my online banking tonight was confused as to why there was just over a tenner next to the company. A decimal place out, according to the crumpled receipt just about to be binned with the rest of the junk mail on the kitchen worktop. Looks like I will just have to calculate out the difference and leave it in the account for a month or two....
I live in the sticks,a 150 mile round trip to this yard and have no local bank to get a "last 10 transactions" statement so luckily I recently got online banking. Otherwise this could have easily resulted in me going overdrawn if they decide like the OP's situation to help themselves to the difference if I had not noticed in time, and me being stung by the bank!!!
Nothing to lose, might have to pay what I was supposed to but if they overcharge me in reclaiming the difference then god help them at the bank!!!!