On Thu, 04 May 2017 18:14:13 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 05/04/2017 4:24 PM, Micky wrote:
OT bank notification of debit card use, continued
...

... complaining about being charged $110 for a car
that only holds 10 gallons of gasoline, when every other gas station
charged between 50 and 57. ...

So today I went to the gas station and showed him a copy of the email
... and all he did was ... give me the gas station chain's phone number.
...

Well, the clerk at the counter doesn't set policy, so talking to them is

I didn't say so but I talked to the manager, who I was told was also
the owner. The counter clerk just did translating.

There's no doubt he was the manager. Not sure if the word "owner" was
understood, even though the counter guy seemed to speak v.good
English. "Owner" is the kind of word that varies in meaning
depending on who's using it.

fruitless; they can't reprogram the pumps. It could be done by
corporate, yes, but it's highly unlikely they're going to change for
you. I'd guess the choice here is to use another station if the hold is
creating other problems.

So ... on April 3, I hadn't paid $110.19, only $44.76,
and on April 10, I hadn't paid $109.74, only $34.36. ...

I didnt' believe that, but I looked at the online monthly statement,
and by golly it was true. What's going on? Why are they sending me
emails saying I paid much more money than I did?

Well, the hold _was_ placed for at least a little while; the

You're right, I'm sure, but if it's only a hold and not a debit, the
bank ought to say that. It ought to alert me that way. Instead it
says
Amount $109.74
Debit/ATM card ending in nnnn
Whe at this brand of gas in this town
When: Date
View details, A link which could go straight to the transaction in
the email but instead just goes to Bank of America, where I have to
page to find the transaction, and where I can't find it by looking for
a matching amount because the amounts don't come close to matching.
And where, when I do find the transaction, the added details are
more about me than about them. It doesn't give the amount of the
charge in the original denomination, It does give the lower amount,
$34.36 and it does say:
Description: CHECKCARD 0410 gas compny & town
and a 23-digit number which I guess is the transaction number
Merchant category: Service Stations (with or without Ancillary
Services)
Merchant category code: 5541
Merchant name: the same as on the email alert.
No reference to a prior hold, 5 minutes earlier, that is now released.

notification 'bot doesn't wait to see there's a later credit to match up
with the merchant ID to send a net or to not bother with notification at
all if that net is under the trigger. If this bugs you, I'd expect
there's a way to shut off the notification entirely

That would be worse, because except for the rentacar and this gas
station (and maybe the others, havent' checked yet) everyone else
sends the right amount.

if you want but that
may have ramifications on coverage protection in case of actual misuse
if they're doing anything above the minimum letter of the law as service.

What's it hurt? Once you're aware of what's happening, it doesn't seem

It took me weeks to figure it out, and I suppose the other 100's of
thousands of BOA customers who look at the alerts are also wasting
their time trying to figure it out. The gas station manager seemed
to know about it when he said "You didn't pay that."

Plus for travelers, someone who had unexpected expenses, or who stayed
longer than planned, might be getting near the end of his money in
the debit account or credit in the credit account.

And most of all, now that I know and since I wasn't running out of
money***, it's just so annoying to see a major institution, bankers
who are supposed to know how to bank, who claim to report transactions
but don't know how to report them.

It's like NASA had telemetry from the Apollo moon shots and the
booster rocket sent back an alert, "About 93,000 gallons of fuel
left", and that's not enough to get the ship out of earth's
gravitational pull and the ground crew is thinking they should abort,
about to abort. Then later Apollo adjusts the amount to say 270,000
gallons of fuel left, but doesn't bother to send that to the ground
crew. Would that system be acceptable?


If they want to send a notice that there is a hold, that's a good
thing but only if they follow with a notice, "Hold released / Actual
charge is $nn.nn." Aren't the actual charges more important to me
than the holds? Especially when the actual charge is only 5 minutes
after the hold? Especially when the hold is 50 dollars more and I
have over 5000 dollars in the account. What I want to know is how
much I was charged.

The monthly statement online does have that information (though I'm
not sure how soon), but it's much much harder to use than email, which
just arrives with no effort. To look at the monthly statement, one
has to be willing to do it on the phone, or he has to have access to a
computer. Has to go to the webpage, log in, get to the summary page
and scroll down looking for the charge. On April 10th somehow I had
about 10 charges on that one day (counting the commission charges
which are listed separately (a little over 1% for a $100 charges, 3%
for 10 dollar charges, and people here use their card for everything.
When I failed to ask for a plastic bag in advance at the supermiarket,
and I had no change, he took my card and charged me for the bag.
$0.03. I havent' checked yet what the commission was on that. ;-)


***Actually I added 4000 dollars to the debit account by writing a
check on another account somewhere else and holding it up to the
phone, and depositing it over net. Very strange. (I wasnt' running
out of money yet, but in case it didnt' work, I wanted time to do
other things.)

as though there's any real concern other than the potential for a
transaction to be turned down elsewhere owing to limit while there's a
high level set but seems like that's only avoidable by changing where
you trade.

It's been a while since I've been overseas but used AmEx CC almost
exclusively; never noticed anything at all untoward with it. I don't
use debit cards owing to their limited consumer protection vis a vis
credit, but that's my personal paranoia.

Oh, and the rentacar place caused the credit-card bank to send me
another notice today
"A transaction on your Voice Credit Card account nicknamed CC2827 with
card ending in 2827 attempted a single transaction that is above the
limit of $1.00 set in your alert preferences. " I hadn't noticed the
word "attempted" before. Maybe that means they're just checking to
see if I have enough credit, but they should be putting a hold on, and
the notice should say hold, not attempt. Attempt makes it sound like
they got the expiration date or the 3-number code wrong, so the charge
failed.

Back to the first bank, Bank of America, when I got charged the same
amount twice in 5 minutes, but one was cancelled, the woman at the
bank said they didnt' send me a notice because the merchant cancelled
it, not the bank. I explained that the merchant made the original
charge to and they notified me about that, so they should notify me
about cancellations. She seemed to agree and said she'd tell her
supervisor or someone. I find it amazing that after all these years,
their procedures are so bad. Maybe there is some benefit to the bank
in having these mistaken procedures, but I can't imagine what it is.

If I went by the rentacar alerts only I'd think they charged me 5000
dollars by now.


And I don't know if I posted here that BOA doesnt' send alerts for
some Ebay purchases claiming the PIN was used, even though it wasn't.
Ebay doesn't know my PIN and certainly the various vendors don't know
my PIN. I spent 2 hours on the phone with BOA about this, the second
hour she had someone from Ebay on the phone with us, and the ebay
woman explained things from her pov but the BOA woman just couldn't
believe that BOA was doing it wrong. I finally got referred to the
Electronic Payment Department, I think it was, but I need to rest up
before another phone call of an hour or two. (I also cherish the weak
hope that if I wait a month or two, the conversation will get back to
someone in charge who will fix this without my having to call again.)

So this is 3 major or substantial mistakes in BOA policy. It's
incredible.