Honey, Was That PotBelly's Sandwich $4.23 Or $858,432?
Sorry PotBelly Sandwich Works customers, you can't order the Chicken Salad Sandwich unless you qualify for a mortgage. Ashley's husband thought his usual lunchtime meal cost $4.23, but, as his wife discovered when trying to pay their credit card bill, the sandwich actually costs $858,432.06.
Ashley writes:
My husband works in downtown Minneapolis and has the annoying habit of putting small purchases on his credit card (under $5.00). He patronizes a chain here called PotBelly Sandwich Works, never spending more than $4.50 a pop. Last week I was paying our credit card bill online and noticed we had pending charges of $858,432.06. Yes--almost a million dollars. Needless to say, our credit limit is about $825,000 less than that. We called Chase and were told that the pending charges were indeed correct but that the charge had been rejected. When the rep told us the charge was made by PotBelly, I couldn't help but laugh. There was a charge that same day from PotBelly for $4.23 because my husband had purchased a sandwich, but that was it. The fraud rep said that because the charge was rejected, not to worry about it, but that it wouldn't disappear from our pending column unless PotBelly reversed the charge. There was no mention from the fraud department of canceling our cards and issuing us new ones. When my husband went to PotBelly the next day, they could give us no information. I can't imagine them reversing an $858,000 charge anyway, especially without a receipt (given this was done after my husband had left the premises.) My husband works in IT for a large corporation and thinks this is nothing but a system glitch and doesn't think it's worth pursuing because the charge was rejected.My question is: what is our next step and what should we be worried about? It sounds as if someone didn't close out a ticket and just kept charging my husband's card. However, there's no way in hell this Potbelly does $858,000 in business in a day--or even a year, I imagine. Anyone who wanted to commit fraud wouldn't, I presume, be so dumb as to charge nearly a million bucks on a personal credit card. The charge is bound to be rejected. I am also disturbed that we did not receive a call from Chase when this charge was put through, but that's a minor quibble at this point. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Ashley is covered under the Fair Credit Billing Act, which protects against incorrect charges. The FTC has instructions for formally disputing the charge, but we wouldn't fret. Chase rejected the charge, and even if they hadn't, it wouldn't be a tough charge to reverse. Sure, her husband may have eaten the sandwich, but PotBelly's still hasn't delivered the pool, tennis court, or the several cars that had to have been promised as side dishes.
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Comments:
That's incredible that the restaurant can even skate through with a charge that high. If I tried this with our merchant account, it would almost definitely be suspended. I'd like to find out who they're banking with.
As a follow-up question, why are people OK with paying interest on sandwiches from PotBelly?
@mugsywwiii:
Apparently a moderator thinks is IS plausible that a restaurant would leave a ticket open and charge $858k to it in a day? Hah! Sorry if I call a spade a spade - the idea that something like that would happen is laughable.
@deadandy:
Could be a responsible consumer who uses a credit card and pays the balance every month. Nice way to earn rewards or even 1% discount across the board.
@deadandy:
I wouldn't assume he's paying interest on it. Many people use their credit cards for rewards and convenience and pay it off every month. Spending and paying off $3500 in a month is kind of high for an IT worker, but entirely plausible.
i hate to think that pot belly was charged the merchant fee on that authorization, usually around 3%... my company is still charged the authorization fee even if a charge is declined or not approved.
@deadandy: I am what the credit card companies don't like: someone who pays off his card purchases like these monthly. I have an airline card from Chase, and that allows me to get miles on my purchases. So he pays $5 for a sandwich, pays off his sandwiches at the end of the month, and gets some miles. That is my theory.
@mugsywwiii: I'm sure it was your tone, not your statement. What probably happened is that the cashier typed in the wrong number to start with tied and failed to delete it, then typed in the correct one and processed it. A simple mistake.
I think the real question here is did that sandwich taste like a million dollars?
I had a similar problem with my Chase account but not as $ large. The bank cannot do anything while it is "pending" and have to wait until it posts. In my case, and most likely in your case, the "pending" will not post but will just disappear as if it never existed. Take screen shots and just wait it out.
I hate to point this out, but according to that screen cap, this happened over two months ago if the next statement date was 8/2/08. Shouldn't this have been resolved by now? If it hasn't, I think THEN there's a problem. Is there a copy of the husbands receipt, either his own copy, or the one he signed which shows the amount? I think this story has some questions to be answered before we all pass judgment on either party.
I think what happened is this store has a credit system which is not attached to the register. So the person enters the amount in a terminal, then tells the register it was paid with a CC. Looks like the person before had a 8.58 charge, and the person didn't hit enter. When this ladies husband came through, they punched in his amount, then swiped his card, which pushed the other card out of the buffer, and charged the whole shebang to his card.
That looks like a cashier error to me.
The food-service place I work at has a system where you have to hit "enter" after the dollar amount before scanning a card, otherwise it asks you if you want to charge the credit card number's worth of money to the card as a "tip".
At that point I always say "NO", cancel the transaction and scan the card a second time for the correct amount of the tab. It's an error I make at least once a shift, but I always catch the error before it gets past my terminal.
I hate to sound like a jerk pointing this out, but according to that screen cap, this happened over two months ago, if the next statement date was 8/2/08. Shouldn't this have been resolved by now? If it hasn't, I think THEN there's a problem. Is there a copy of the husbands receipt/charge, either his own copy, or the one he signed which shows the amount? I think this story has some questions to be answered before we all pass judgment on either party, store or customer.
I think what happened is this store has a credit system which is not attached/joined to the register. So the person enters the amount in a terminal, then tells the register it was paid with a CC. Looks like the person before had a 8.58 charge, and the cashier didn't hit enter. When the husband came through, they punched in his amount, then swiped his card, which pushed the other card out of the memory, and charged the whole thing to his card.
Come on! Give PotBelly's a break! They CLEARLY got the numbers 4, 2, and 3 in there. What more could you expect??
The charge looks like its the combo of several small order, 1 for 8.58 and 1 for 4.23.
Hasn't consumerist run a couple of stories already about fast food joints bunching in bad numbers and locking families out of their savings for a weekend cause of the tiem it takes to reverse these charges?
damnit, this place really needs an edit button :(
Even though the charge didn't go through, just imagine... At $858,432, that better be one BIG and TASTY sandwich!
The real crime here is the OP using Norton Internet Security.
Biggest pile of app crap out there.
Apparently they weren't referring to color when they mentioned the sandwich's ruby red tomatoes and golden bun.
@OminousG: [consumerist.com] $2,243 bill for Burger King
[consumerist.com] $8,648 bill at BK again. No wonder the King is trying to slip money into people's pockets.
@pete: Particularly since everything is green. Pending charges of 5-10x your annual income but everything is FINE.
@homerjay: Actually, I think there is a mistake in the title and paragraph. Unless my eyes are fooling me, the title and paragraph say $858,432, but the pending charges says $858,462. Not a "3", but a "6".
Just throwing that out there.
@deadandy: To those who think the OP is paying off the card every month, you might note the "balance last statement" amount of over $2k.
I personally like that according to Norton Internet Security there is no Fraud here. Good to know!
@GearheadGeek: What says he's not revolving 2k a month through the card? The balance last statement field doesn't mean what you seem to think it does.
And here I thought I had it bad when I got charged $4004.00 for a single beer this june.
Similar thing happened to me once. I charged around $35 for some stuff, and my CC got charged around $150. Took my receipt and copy of my statement into the store.
Turned out their system rolls up charges and bulk sends them to their CC processor. Somehow I got charged for the roll-up amount. The store took a few hours to research the issue, but found it. They refunded the full amount and offered not to charge me the original amount due to the trouble.
@GearheadGeek: That means how much he owed at the end of the last statement period. It doesn't count payments made this month to last month's balance. I bank with Chase, and I've never paid a dime of interest, and that "Balance last statement" field always has at least $2000 in it.
For a couple who shares a credit card, I don't think $2000/month is a lot at all.
I've seen this happen before at my place of work. In my coworker's case, it glitched reading a UPC, and prompted for a price. Now, that isn't supposed to happen, so the coworker kept scanning, thinking it was fine.
The next UPC she entered was processed as the price of the previous item. Thus, the maximum we could charge was put on the bill. Thankfully we caught it early and tried to figure out wha the hell happened (a damaged UPC). But I can see this happening. In this case, my guess is that the credit card number was entered as the price of the item.
And here I was all annoyed that this past summer a local burger place charged me twice for the same meal at the same time.
That one was a little weird to get out of; the burger place basically told me to take a hike, but Amex saw that short of it being a qunatum burger, two charges at the same exact time for the same price on the same day at the same location was a little more than unusual.
Wow, and I thought getting charged $1004 for a Beanie Baby was bad.
The husband's receipt, if he still has it, would show $4.23. I doubt the cashier gave him the $850,000 one. Signatures are not required to request money from a credit card. Not sure what the point of the signature process is anymore.
"My husband works in downtown Minneapolis and has the annoying habit of putting small purchases on his credit card"
Can you imagine what the mess would have been if he put the purchase on his debit card? I need more annoying habits like this.
i'm now no longer going to complain when my credit union calls for charges on my credit card they feel are questionable. I am never anything but thankful to them, but admittedly I get annoyed having to "yes mom, it's FINE"... them.
i'd not be satisfied until it was case closed... done deal off my account.
at 15.99% I hope they're paying off those pot belly's each month.
I've been to PotBelly before (the one in Eagan), it was ok. A bit small for the price, but it was decent. Certainly not worth nearly 900K, but what food is? Ok, the old Insider Pizza from Pizza Hut was...but that's it.
In short: an authorization request above 50.000 must always be done by phone from the merchant to the creditcard issuer, it may not be approved through swiping it through the machine.
The merchant could send it without electronic authorization (sales slip) if the amount is lower then his floor limit (but there are no such merchants with such floor limits so it would be denied as well..)
The electronic request should and would simply be denied and therefor should not be 'pending' either.
Such request happen fairly often, most of the times consumers will never hear or see anything of it.
These are standard rules for Mastercard and Visa.
From the article: "Anyone who wanted to commit fraud wouldn't, I presume, be so dumb as to charge nearly a million bucks on a personal credit card. The charge is bound to be rejected."
I one worked with someone who's wife worked in a restaurant. She wanted to know what her cerdit limit was so she would swipe her card through the credit card machine and put in a $1000 transaction. She kept this up until she received a signal that the limit had been reached. When the husband found out and was upset about it, her response was that she didn't "purchase" anything, so she didn't think that the charge would go through. So yes, people can be that dumb :-)
I am surprised that no one has yet commented on the "NO FRAUD DETECTED" at the top of the page with the bright green background. One would think that an $800K charge on a card with a limit of $24K might trigger a fraud alert.
you'd think that when they tried to close out that night & the totals were WAAAAAY off, that someone would try to figure out what happened. so maybe it wasn't something that they were able to catch in the store, but something with the VISA system they use?
@Rachacha:
Several people have mentioned that actually, and I assumed they were joking. I don't think you are. Apparently you expect clairvoyance from software developers. The no fraud detected message you see likely indicates that the website the browser is displaying is not suspected of phishing. Expecting Norton Internet Security to detect fraud on your credit card accounts is absurd.
Sounds like they scanned a bar code or, as others have noted, typed in $8.58 and $4.32 as one number. But that doesnt explain why it actually showed up on their credit.
@failurate:
If the card issuer wanted verification of the transaction, I'm sure they would expect to see a signature (or the CVV code for a remote transaction). No proof, no sale.
Maybe your husband is just hiding those 200,000 sandwiches he purchased for the wild party he had? It is a shame you don't have the receipt/slip as I'd be interested to see if it had the right amount or if the glitch happened somewhere else.