Kansas Gas Station Forced Customer To Pay Twice

A gas station in Kansas sold $85.11 to a customer over the weekend. She paid with a MasterCard; which, she was told, was declined. So she settled the transaction with her Visa. After getting back into her vehicle, she called the bank through which her MasterCard line of credit is extended to find out why her card was declined. Imagine her surprise when she was told that the transaction was not declined at all, but approved, and had already been paid! The customer service representative told her to go back inside the gas station and request that the transaction be voided and her money credited.

The customer went back inside and told the clerk about the phone call to the bank. The clerk insisted, despite the bank's claim that the sale was approved, that the sale had been declined. The clerk also claimed that she "did not know" how to credit a transaction! The customer then requested that she call her supervisor to resolve the conflict of having been forced to pay twice. The supervisor got the number of the bank from the customer and promised to call the bank. A few minutes later, the customer called him back, and he said that he had called the bank and that he had been told that the transaction did not go through. Then, he told the customer that he would not "pay" her anything, and asked her if she "scammed money off credit cards for a living"!

Meanwhile, back at the bank, the customer was later told that the supervisor had never called. So....at this writing, it quite looks as if he lied. A customer was forced to pay twice for her a purchase of $85.11, and then accused of "scamming credit cards for a living". This city in Kansas prides itself on being a quaint small town with a friendly atmosphere, by the way. An accusation of theft to an honest person certainly does not qualify as "friendly", and the whole interaction, from an approved purchase being reported as declined, and twice as much money extorted as was actually owed very much reeks of credit card fraud and possibly of identity theft.

The FBI has a special unit to assist victims of credit card fraud and identity theft; the link is here:http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/victim_assistance/fincrime_vic. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission keeps a record of each and every complaint received. While it does not get involved in conflict resolution, it watches for patterns of practices, such as telling customers that approved credit cards have been declined and double billing and double charging customers. This could easily have been a deliberate attempt to scan as many credit cards, for information on magnetic strips, as possible, during a day's time.