Double debit on debit card transaction

winkydink

Hi. I apologise if there is another thread open regarding this, but have searched all over and can't find one...

I went to Aldi on 29/11 and used my debit card to pay for my shopping. The amount was £93.64. It took ages for the payment to be processed, the hand held terminal showed 'authorising' for a long time. The assistant cancelled it, saying that it had happened alot that day, due to the 'link' being busy. He processed the transaction again, and it went through immediately.

However!! The following week, I got my bank statement and the amount had debited my account twice, but not re-credited it at all.

I contacted my bank, Barclays, who said they wouldn't consider looking at the problem until 15 days had elapsed, as more than likely, the problem would be spotted and the money re-credited by Aldi's bank.

Not happy with this, I contacted Aldi who promised to get a manager to call me back at 10am the following day. No call received, I called them back, and they asked me to take a copy of my bank statement in.

I did this the same day (5/12).

As I still hadn't heard anything by 12/12 I called Aldi again. The manager apologised and said the the area manager, who was dealing with the query, had handed in his resignation and left - apparently taking my bank statement with him!!! He asked me to take another copy in, which I have done.

My bank account is going to go overdrawn tomorrow as i don't get paid until 17/12. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been double debited. I will incurr charges and failed transactions.

Any help offered would be greatly appreciated, before I blow my top!! :mad:

hippey

What does you receipt show?

DC transactions if reversed will normally go back within a couple of days or so, the 15 days sounds like the standard industry response.

All the retailers need to do is check thier end of day report they should be 'over' although it will depend on what the cashier actually did.

winkydink

Thanks Hippey. The store said their report showed only one transaction, but I've definitely been charged twice. I put the receipts 'somewhere safe' and now I can't find it. Typical! All I have are the details on my bank statement, although this does show the transactions ID's - one number in sequence apart. Looks like they put it through on two different transactions to me.

Mikeyorks

Fastest route to getting your money back is Aldi .... the transaction references should enable their 'merchant acquirer' (company that handles their card payments) to clearly see 2 complete transactions for identical amounts and literally back to back. And then they should be able to process a refund ..... there and then. But as the duplicate is a fully completed transaction .... the refund will take 24 / 48hrs to show.

Slower route is 'disputing the transaction' directly to the Bank. 15 days has elapsed!

Extant

Unfortunately, if you dispute it with us, we have to in turn raise it as a dispute with the merchant - so it's only really suited to fraud, and not for a double debit.

I would have thought Aldi would just be able to issue you with a refund, rather than going to their area manager...

winkydink

Thanks for your help everyone! Aldi rang me today to confirm that they will put the credit on my card if I take it in. Apparently, their Merchant Acquirer couldn't find the transactions, but eventually has. Phew!

Richard019

I realise the situation has been solved but as a member of Aldi store staff I'll try to explain why a few of the things have come up the way they have (and some of the queries from other people). I must also state that my view is from my experiance and may not be 100% accurate, I don't speak for the company etc

Firstly the story being told is quite familiar, not just for us, it also happened regularly when I was with Sainsbury. When things are busy card transactions often fail first time, particularly at weekends (off the top of my head you were there on a Saturday).

Now from an assistant's point of view, if the transaction goes through it clears our tills to serve the next customer. If the shopping/total is still displayed after the card has been dealt with then it hasn't gone through and we need to do it again or the goods stay in the store. That is the stores view on and I doubt if even the end of day report will show it up as both the till and the card reader will have reported a fault/declined transaction. If that happens I always make sure I tell the customer to keep both sets of receipts just in case, but that's due to experiance from before I joined the company.

Now back when I was at Sainsbury quite a few customers came in to see us after this had happened to say that they'd been charged twice, but as said above it automatically got credited back to them a few days later. Only once have I known it not go back, and on that occassion all the computers at store level showed only one transaction.

In Aldi an area manager doesn't perform quite the same duties as they do in the other supermarkets. It seems to be more like the manager deals the day to day operation whilst the area manager deals with the less urgent things and anything involving contacting head office that isn't a delivery issue. The reason it will have been referred to them is because they will have wanted to track down what had happened to the money before refunding it and I would suspect that as in the case at Sainsbury there was no evidence of it on our systems in store.

Having misplaced the receipts you were given, even though Aldi are doing the refund for you if you think you're going to have bank charges I would ask them if you could have a copy of the customer copies of the original transactions to take in to the bank. As you've got the total amount and the date of the transaction it shouldn't be a problem for them to find it on their computer, we do it for people who've lost their receipt and are returning an item and it only takes a few minutes.

If you take those into the bank the first one will say it was declined (it only has one way of showing a failed transaction on our tills) and the bank will hopefully just refund/not apply the charges, if they won't I would speak to Aldi again. Had Aldi not said they'd do the refund that is how I would suggest you got the money back from your bank in the first place.

winkydink

Thanks for that info Richard019 - definitely worth knowing! Luckily the refund came through just in time and I didn't incurr bank charges.