Duplicate Debit Debacle Hits Best Buy, Macys. Who’s Next?
Written by Evan Schuman and Fred J. Aun March 18th, 2009
Following a December glitch at Macys that saw 8,000 customers double- and tripled charged for debit transactions comes word of an eerily similar triple charge glitch at Best Buy this month.
In both cases, the retailers initially painted the problems as isolated incidents. In both cases, the retailers thought initial debit card swipes didn’t work and asked the customer to try again, sometimes twice more. And in both cases, the banks removed money from the consumer’s bank account equivalent to two and three times the price of the product.
Could these be coincidences? Might they indeed be isolated debit card incidents? Absolutely. But this also might be an initial heads up that the debit card system relied on by major retailers today has inherent flaws. What happened, with both Macys and Best Buy, with software specifically designed to look for and prevent these kinds of multiple identical charges? What about the systems at the card processors and the banks?
The most frightening part about debit card transactions today is that they subject retailers to a debit double whammy. Debit transactions are exponentially more delicate—and more prone to glitching—than their credit card counterparts. At the same time, an error with a debit transaction can deliver an order of magnitude more damage, potentially cleaning out a customer’s bank account and causing them to unknowingly bounce checks to everyone they’re trying to pay. Few IT glitches have the potential to get a loyal customer in trouble with the police, but debit card glitches have that distinction. Continue Reading at StoreFront BackTalk
