I knew this stuff would start happening when fast food joints started taking credit/debit cards. The moral to this story is obvious: Pay Cash! Or at least use a credit card. Throw the debit card in the trash where it belongs.
4 Burgers At Burger King for $4,334.33 — Takes Days To Resolve
A quick meal at George Beane’s neighborhood Burger King ended up costing a lot more than he expected when he got the $4,334.33 bill.
Beane ordered two Whopper Jr.s and two Rodeo cheeseburgers when he pulled up to the drive-through window last week. The cashier, however, forgot that she’d entered the $4.33 charge on his debit card and punched in the numbers again without erasing the original ones — thus creating a four-figure bill.
The electronic charge went through to George and Pat Beane’s checking account Tuesday and left the couple penniless. Their mortgage payment was due and they worried checks they had written would bounce, Pat Beane said.
“We were thinking, ‘No, not now!'” she said of the overcharge.
Terri Woody, the restaurant manager, said Burger King officials tried to get the charge refunded. But the bank said the funds were on a three-day hold and could not be released, Pat Beane said.
haha, obviously labor of this skill level should be paid at least $13 an hour.
Yeah, Debit is so Crap.
Especially the part where it asks you to confirm the amount. I mean, are we ACTUALLY expected to READ that?
I use my rewards credit card for everything. I would have gotten 5% of that 4,000.00 bill back to spend on more hamburgers. That would be super!
Serves the Guy right for not checking his purchice price.
I use my Debit card in Canada for almost eveything I buy. I know to check the till amout with the amout showing on the debit system. In the US, if you dont have to confirm the price, select an account, and then enter the Card PIN you have a really crappy debit system.
I bet you this guy will always confirm his purchase price from now on. Just because this guy was to dumb to use debit properly one shouldn’t diss the whole debit system.
Several problems here
1. stupid Burger King employee, goes without saying
2. Customer did not confirm the price before pressing enter
3. Banks unwillingness to resolve the problem in a timely fashion, even though they were told it was a mistake by both the merchant and customer.
Debit cards are the future, but it seem not everyone is up to par on their use.
Was it a debit purchase or was it a checkcard where the transaction is processed like a credit card? I’ve never seen a keypad at the drive-tru window.
If it was a credit transaction, i could understand since a $4 transaction wouldn’t even require a signature.
Disregarding all the other problems here, who the hell programmed the Point Of Sale System? How often does a fast food order come to thousands of dollars? A simple sanity check in the software would have caught this. Actually, anything over 100.00 should require a second approval by the store manager on duty.
I have read in some of these comments that this guy must not have been paying attention and not checking the purchase price. I don’t know where the commenters are from but when using my card in the drive through, I’ve never had the opportunity to check the price before I allowed it to happen. That was using my debit card and one of my credit cards. At most of the convinenence stores it’s been that way as well, just a little pin pad to input my pin, but I’ve never had any problems like this.
Of course there is a three day bank hold. The bank gets to keep the interest on those funds. If they didn’t put a hold on the funds, how would they earn interest on your money?
Should have read the receipt and corrected the error on the spot.
Cashier made a mistake, but the error belongs to the customer for being careless. No sympathy in this situation.
Always request a receipt and ALWAYS check it for errors. This simple process has saved me from over charging more than once.
‘Me’ has an excellent point – Why doesn’t the POS software have a sanity check for ridiculous transactions?
I assume that the people who are posting things like “Should have looked at the dollar amount on the till” and “Should have read the receipt” have never gotten drive-thru at an American fast food franchise, because only company-owned stores and Taco Bell routinely provide receipts and I’ve only seen a dollar amount displayed at newer Burger Kings and McDeaths, who have put TFT’s at their drive-thru ordering stations.
I ask for a receipt every time, and it sometimes takes them 2-3 minutes of fumbling to produce one, negating the whole point of the drive-thru. (Dismiss the usefulness of the drive-thru itself all you want, but its existence and popularity render such arguments moot.) The blame here lies squarely on the franchise, not the consumer.
Pretty near every drive thru in my city has debit machines – with keypads that have very long cords.
I’m astonished but people are buying crummy 99-cent Taco Bell tacos using the machines. I mean, geez.
“Should have read the receipt and corrected the error on the spot.”
I guess you didn’t read, they discovered the mistake and even Burger King tried to get the debit refunded, but the douche bank would not budge on its 3 day hold of the funds. After the receipt was printed the transaction was done, would not have mattered.
This is why I a) check the receipts and don’t just punch “Yes” without looking at the amount it wants me to confirm and b) I use a smaller bank where I can get help quickly and efficiently when I need it.
The bank isn’t at fault here – they did nothing wrong. The customer didn’t pay attention to the amount and the BK employee punched in the wrong numbers.
Just saying that dissing the entire debit system because of one mistake is pretty pointless – it has its good points
Are you guys paying the $0.50 or more transaction fee for debit card use? Or do they not have these in your area?
That’s a 5-10% surcharge! AND they take out your money immediately. Total ripoff.
I think I (and maybe others) are confusing an ATM debit transaction, using a PIN, with a “check card” transaction using the same card like a credit card.
Even if they took care of the problem at the store, by issuing a refund for $4330.00, aren’t both transactions still going to be on a 3 day hold?
Could someone try it and find out for us?? 🙂
Or you could have paid in cash and gotten counterfeit money in change.
I’m surprised that the customer’s bank even allowed the transaction as it probabally exceeded the daily limit for one card. I’ve had it happen to me.
As far as the POS system allowing the outrageous transaction, the merchant was probabally using a separate credit/debit card terminal. The cafe at my work does this even though their POS system has a card reader…
Btw, if you process the transaction as a Credit transaction, you get the benefits of the Visa/Mastercard. If you process as Debit, you typically are out of luck.
My bank charges me to use my card as a debit card. I always tell store employees to hit the credit option.
I have never used a credit card(or debit) at a fast food place. If I can’t afford the cash for a meal deal…then I eat somewhere healthy…..
If it weren’t for Mc Donalds fries I would never go near a fast food.
A convincing case for eating naturally organic foods grown in excrement fertilized fields, along side the marijuana, in your own backyard.
My question is why do they still have people entering in the number? That’s just asking for a mistake. Don’t they enter in the order and the computer figures out the cost? Why can’t they just have the computer tell the debit what the cost is? I know it’s possible, I see it set up like that everywhere I go.
The bank screwed up by first allowing the transaction then by not stopping it. The bank was made aware that the account holder had not approved the transaction. The bank receives a transaction fee for every transaction. That makes them responsible for correcting any error they are made aware of. The three days is bullcrap. The money never left the bank and the bank had three days free use.
Now, where are all the Libertarians that want to deregulate the banks even more?
Bureaucracy (boy, what a challenging word to spell correctly even though I’ve said hundreds of times!)– bureaucracy TAKES money so easily, it GIVES back like a mule in heat. Debit cards are a direct transaction. In this world we need a Holy Spirit, a proxy server, a third party to protect us from direct contact. Credit cards are the way to go in a society based on trust but filled with liars.