If it was a debit card, then wouldn't the customer have to "okay" the ammount before putting in their PIN anyways?

Its possible he processed it as a credit card which would still take the money out of his account but not require him to put his pin in. Theoretically, though, he SHOULD have been required to sign the receipt if that was the case..

Not if it was a check card which works the same as a credit card.

I need to get in the habit of looking at the receipt before I walk away. That's something that could/should have been corrected on the spot.

Another reason to use credit cards, not debit cards. If there's a billing error, I'd rather have at least three weeks (and sometimes as much as 7) to get it corrected than zero.

Burger King and Wendy's still have the swipe machines behind the counter and they take your card and process it as a credit card no matter what it is. Mc Donald's is the only one that I know of that has the keypads out on the counter so you can do debit.

Lots of times, low cost transactions are run without requiring a signature. And hell, requireing a signature wouldn't have helped, as the card was already charged.

@joeblevins: $2200 is a low cost transaction? :)

Would you guys mind explaining to me how thar all worksd, then?

North of the border:
Debit card: Cashier puts in amount, customer okays the amount, chooses which account to withdraw from, puts in their PIN, and waits for it to be approved, then gets a copy of the receipt. The customer sees the amount before it goes through.

Credit cards: Cashier swipes card, puts in amount, has one recepit signed by the customer and the other given to the customer. The customer doesn't see the amount until they go to sign the receipt.

@Fry: Excuse the typos, I was typing sideways and missed those two...

I'm not sure exactly how this works, but a lot of places just swipe the card and don't ask if it's credit or debit. Plus, since the addition of credit card reading is relatively new, and not built into the registers yet at some places, they have a whole separate system for handling them. They swipe the card and have to type in the amount that gets charged onto the card by hand into a tiny little machine.

It's a shitty system, and it's probably only there because they only grudgingly take credit cards as payment and wanted the cheapest system to handle them with the lowest transaction fees. Since most fast food joints are franchised, the owner pays the fees instead of the corporation.

And what about the customer? He had to autorize the transaction SOMEHOW.

Many places don't require a signature for credit card purchases under $25. --I only started seeing it a couple of years ago.

Should his wife have looked at the receipt when she received it so the problem could have (hopefully) been corrected sooner? Yes. But equally so, Burger King - both at the store level and the corporate level - should have staff in place to fix such mistakes, even over a holiday weekend.

And then there's the question as to whether or not fast food restaurants should be able to processes charges of that magnitude. --Maybe it happens more often than I'd think, but I just don't see many people needing to spend over $1000 at once!

Easily explained... happens all over the place in the states. For example: Walgreens will 'charge' your Debit/Check Card when getting prescriptions without a signature. Sonic swipes your card and hands you a receipt without a signature. Burger King does the same. Taco Bell does the same blah blah blah

It is what they call 'convenient'. Ya, I can see that this guy and his family find this realllll convenient. *rolls eyes*

Too bad that these incidents don't force these businesses to change their policies.

OMG, I'm still using a card that directly takes money out of my checking account because I'm stupid! Now there was a mistake and I want to cry about it!

Get over it. Everyone has been told to never use your debit card for purchases since like 1980. If you still want to do it, then put up with mistakes happening sometimes.

I'd also like to point out that the clerk working probably noticed it but thought it was machine error and didn't say anything to the customer.

I was in a Dunkin Donuts last week where the clerk rang up a combo incorrectly. I asked her if she had rung it up correctly, and she said, no there was a price increase. The manager also backed her up. I pointed at the signs above their heads and said, well, it still says it only costs x amount, not z amount. The manager said "I had this problem a few times this morning at the drive through, it's a price increase." I told them I'd gladly call the NC Dept of Weights and Measures (which was located 2 miles away) and kindly ask them to investigate - at which point they realized they had made a mistake and were ringing up the combos as individual items and gave me my refund.

Was I a jerk for complaining about a 50 cent overcharge? I don't think so. I hope it saved a few other people 50 cents.

My point is that you should ALWAYS check your receipts, no matter how small, because if they're mis-charging you, they're probably doing it to others.

I'm very sorry this family had this experience.

Actually this happened to me a long time ago. I rented a car out on the west coast. When I returned it everything looked fine and the receipt was good. When I got back to the east coast I decided to buy a new DVD (Men in Black which tells you how long ago this was) and the charge was rejected. I thought it was just the credit machine that was broken, but it bugged me. I call my bank and they tell me that instead of the $200 for the car rental they charged me $2200 instead! Similarly it was a long weekend so I couldn't get it resolved until the Tuesday.

Fortunately it was my credit card so there wasn't much damage done in that respect. Just the inconvenience of not having a credit card for the weekend, so I just compensated by using cash.

Stuff like this makes me feel that debit-cards really aren't worth the trouble. Holds at gas-stations, car rentals, now at fast food joints! Credit cards are the way to go.

@Crumbles: You're right! Businesses should have no responsibility whatsoever to charge people correctly. It was all the OP's fault! I'm so glad you pointed that out.

P.S. sarcasm

We accidentally overcharge customers at my business from time to time. (maybe 2x/year) Usually takes a few minutes to check out a transaction report to see what happened and then we happily refund any overages. If our mistake causes them to overdraw, we do require them to show proof with a bank statement b/c we had a guy try to snake us one time for some extra $$$ when he never even overdrew his account.

Only sucky part is that the money comes out of your bank account instantly, but on a refund, it takes 3-4 business days to get back there. I have to explain to customers that we've done our part, but the bank is siting on your money now.

@homerjay: Look at it from the Clerk's perspective: "Do I ask for a signature? No, it's under $25. Ok. Just put the receipt in a drawer."

@Crumbles: Ok, do you then mind if I take the time to write out a check while in front of you in line? Do fast food places even take personal checks, I wonder?

The point is: simmer down now.

Okay, everyone is saying that charges under $25 don't need a signature, right? Also, places like Burger King have registers that are designed for ANYONE to use, very very simple. So if the charge is OVER $25 (as in this case), wouldn't it automatically require a signature?

Also, she should check her recipt.

At the very least I hope BK pays all the overdraft fees.

@JustAGuy2:
Agreed!

@DeliBoy:
No, the point is that responsible, prudent, consumers pay with credit cards, get cash back, get to borrow money for free, and pay zero interest by paying their bills on time.

@Fry: Nope. If the cashier is swiping your card you don't see the amount until you get the receipt.

@Fry: You can swipe debit cards as credit cards, no pin required. In some situations, you don't sign a receipt. For example, if you pay-at-the-pump at a gas station, no signing, just the printed receipt. At my drugstore (Walgreens), no signing under $25, although you still have to approve the amount on the swipe-machine.

At all the local fast food places, no signing. I've never bought more than $10 of fast food at a time, so I don't know if that's for ALL transactions or if it tops out, but you don't sign. And if you do drive-through with two windows, they swipe it at the first and you don't get the receipt until the 2nd window.

Why does the total have to be manually keyed into the debit processor instead of being automatically transferred from the register?

@JustAGuy2: No, the point is that business shouldn't be overcharging their customers.

@AlteredBeast: It depends on the system they use. Gas stations never make you go inside on a self-swipe because it's $25.01 ... you can charge as much as you dang well want without signing at a pay-at-the-pump. But other places it's common, like drug stores, will have a cutoff.

Someone should call a Burger King and ask if they have a cut-off on the no signature thing. I could see how if 99% of your transactions were under $25 (or $40 or whatever), building a cut-off for no-signature transactions might not be a high priority. Although right about now it should probably START to be a high priority.

@Fry: No, at fast food chains all cards are run as a credit card even if its a debit card. McDonalds often will have a debit keypad.

I for one hardly carry cash and always use my debit card as a credit card. Some banks charge a fee to use your debit card, granted not many, but some. This is mostly at gas stations I have noticed.

This is clearly a combination error of the computer system at Burger King and the worker behind the counter. I for one, have noticed so many workers that are not trained on the computer systems but are put on the front lines.

This is why you should never use debit cards. There is NEVER a reason to, a credit card is ALWAYS a better choice. I realy don't get this.

Best solution as the previous consumerists put it, go CREDIT CARD! And with a responsible company too. Mine monitors usage patterns and if anything looks funny, they halt the processing process and call me. So far I've not had a problem aside from the morons imprinting the cards screwing up by the numbers.

Who? check
What? check
Why? check
How? check
Where? bzzzzzzz

The location is Boise, Idaho. Even the original TV station article fails, as it just says "a local Burger King". Consumerist and KTVB should not be pussyfooting around. This BK should be hung out to dry and made infamous for making this mistake and not fixing it right away.

@AlteredBeast: Yeah surely there is some way to kick out huge transactions or ones over a certain amount for a signature.

As for gas pump transactions some places stop the pumps at $75 no matter what- can be a pain if filling a work truck or using the same pump for two cars.

What no Manager on duty? That's okay, my lawyer works over holidays...

This happened to me at my Veterinarian a few years back. The receptionist missed the decimal point and charged me about $1000 more than my bill was.

She immediately caught the error and did a "return" on the payment.

The problem then was (as was in this case) that the return wasn't going to show up in my account for a few days.

I immediately called Bank of America's 1-800 customer service and asked what I should do. I certainly didn't want to be "out of money" and overdrawn in my checking account.

The customer service representative said that I should dispute the charge -- that way the $1000 would be back in my account immediately. When the return posted to my account she suggested that I call BoA back to "undispute" the disputed charge.

I followed her advice ... and it worked! :)

Use Cash.

I think the bank would just come and kill me if I put that much on my debit card. I'm a poor college student with terrible money management skills and that would overdraw my account so much...now I have a new fear.

Also, with everyone saying "they don't require a signature for low transactions" "Wait aha! this is not a low transaction what now?" I have a feeling the clerk was just operating in autopilot for the receipt because it's unlikely he or she would have been like "here sign your $2000 dollar receipt, normally we don't do this but your $22 worth of burgers has somehow cost you thousands" without noticing something was up.

no one has mentioned the fact that although merchants often ask "debit or credit?" if they don't ask, they are going to run it as a debit, because they are not charged a terminal fee for "credit" purchases on a check card with a visa or mastercard symbol.

i agree that in this instance the consumer should have checked her receipt. i am one of the few human beings left on the planet who still uses an old fashioned debit card (without the visa/mc symbol) and in a situation where the cashier is actually keying in the dollar amount, i always check the receipt. usually you can tell this is what's happening if the pin pad is a separate device connected to a standalone debit machine. otherwise, the $2,200 amount would have popped up on the register and the consumer would have known what was going on from the beginning.

however, i don't think the moral of this story is about a stupid consumer, it's about a gigantic corporation that doesn't have someone on staff on a holiday weekend - although their stores are happily open to accept your money - to rectify huge errors like this one.

@zarex42: Unfortunately, some people don't qualify for credit cards and debit cards are a convenient alternative. Personally, I will not carry a debit card. When my bank switched from ATM cards to debit cards, I stopped carrying one. I've heard too many horror stories about bounced checks due to intentional fraud and mistakes like these.

Of course checks aren't immune, I had an insurance payment check go through at 10x the written amount (on a holiday weekend), but then it was clearly the bank's fault and they fixed it, waved the NSF charge on the check that bounced and wrote a letter explaining the mistake.

The long and the short of it, it was the clerk's fault and they should have rectified it as soon as possible, even if that meant calling the manager at home to do so. And Burger King should figure out a way to limit charges without manager's approval to something reasonable.

@homerjay: I am betting that at that Burger King, most transactions wouldn't require a signiture, since they are used to low level transactions. And the woman wouldn't have checked the price anyway. She was too busy making sure she wasn't in a 'How can they cancel the Whopper?' commercial.

This story jumps the gun a little - would be nice to see what happens on Tuesday once the holiday is over. That is if Burger King will do the right thing of taking care of the extra charges the user had because of their mistake or not.

I mean as of right now, Burger King can still do everything correct in fixing this mistake, but sounds like the consumer was quick to get attention to the story and not get as worried about getting things fixed.

At my local BK, the cashier swipes the card on the register, neither button-pushing approval nor signature are required, and I don't get a receipt until I receive my food. I'm verbally instructed what my order number is at the time of ordering, in either Spanish or English, depending on how dark and wavy my hair is. Unless I investigate my receipt during my Whopper, I would never know what they charged. But I will start checking all such receipts carefully. Oh, and some people just don't have credit cards and can't get them, so get over it.

@Fry:

If it was a debit card, then wouldn't the customer have to "okay" the ammount before putting in their PIN anyways?

No. That's an ATM card. Stores mistakenly call them debit cards, but they are not.

Debit cards work (from the POS POV) like a credit card and are indiscernible from credit cards save for what the card may have printed on it.

When I was a retail manager, there was no way in hell to close out the register without making sure that the cc's matched. You could be over/ short on cash and it was ok, but all electronic payments had to match. This would be a fairly obvious mistake and if I was the manager we would automatically adjust the transaction to the correct amount before sending the batch in. My understanding is that a visa checkcard transaction could be cancelled until the batch was submitted to the bank (an electronic deposit at the end of each register's shift) without affecting the consumer. The sale was pre-authorized until that point.

I am sure that this store manager will be in the shiz-it for the mistake on his end anyhow, before it came to light in the media.

@Rectilinear Propagation:

True. It's also true that the OP, by using a debit card, has the financial equivalent of a set of tires that will burst if they're inflated one pound past the level printed on the tires.

I had my account double charged by Cingular once and it overdrew me. My bank refunded my overdraft fees because of it. No big deal, unless your bank sucks.

@zarex42: I don't understand the whole "debit is better" argument, either. I have friends who swear by debit cards because they don't trust themselves to pay off a credit card every month. WTF? Adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s who don't have the self-control to not charge more than they can pay? I just don't buy that. I think too many people are drinking the kool-aid of bank marketing campaigns.

A lot of places just swipe the card and then ask if you want a receipt. No signature or pin number required.

@Jeangenie: That's something I never would have thought of before from lack of experience in retail. I'm glad I have one more piece of knowledge to levy in the event some absurd occurrence like this happens to me.