Credit Card Dilemma

I pay all my expenditures with a credit card. It’s always the same credit card, which simplifies things. I pay the bill off every month to avoid interest charges.

In July, I paid the June bill. A few days ago I was looking at my credit card statement for July and I noticed they had credited my July payment for the June bill twice. Same day, same amount, listed twice on the statement. At first I thought the mistake was mine and I had paid the bill twice. But I checked my bank statement and it showed I had made only one payment in July to the credit card company. So this was their mistake.

I thought about saying nothing but, as I’m honest to a fault, I knew I had to let the card company know about it. So I called their 800 number, which is listed on the back of the card in a font so tiny it requires a microscope to read the number. My call was answered by a robot voice. It wanted to know how it could help me. Now these robot things are designed for simple situations such as “I want to pay my bill”, or “I want to check my balance.” They are completely inadequate for something like “You applied my payment for the June statement twice.” Saying that will elicit this response: “If you will give me a little more information, I can help you.” Trust me, there is no amount of information that will make this robot voice understand the situation. After going around the mulberry bush a few times with the robot, I hung up.

I called back with another strategy. When the robot voice answered, I told it, “I want to talk to a human.” The robot voice replied, “If you will give me a little more information, I can help you.” And I said, “No, I want to talk to a human.” The robot voice replied, “I understand, you want to talk to a human. If you will give me a little more information, I can help you.”

No, we’re not doing this again. With persistence, I was able to contact a human, doubtless in a call center. After giving him sufficient proof that I was who I said I was, he checked my account on his computer. “Everything looks okay,” he told me.

“But you applied my June payment twice,” I told him. He responded, “Everything looks okay.”

I thanked him for his time and hung up. I pondered the matter. Perhaps the June payment that was listed twice on the statement had been applied only once. So I copied the statement to a spreadsheet to see if the two payments were actually applied. The spreadsheet agreed with the statement. The card company had indeed applied my June payment twice.

The outcome of this is going to be one of two things. One, I get free money on my credit card account, or two, the credit card company has me charged with committing computer fraud.

If you don’t hear from me again, well, I’m just saying—the U.S. Marshalls may have picked me up. Stay tuned for further developments.

I’m hitting the Publish button now. I have to go, there’s someone knocking on my front door. Strange, someone at my door this time of night.