Arguably, the most important fact in this story is that there’s a grocery chain called “Schnucks.” It’s located in the Midwest, and Brandon and his fiancee shop there, employing a complicated credit-card-tab-splitting procedure that normally causes no problems. This time, it did, resulting in a double charge. Brandon wonders whether he’s justified in pursuing a chargeback, since he still doesn’t have his money back. Short answer: Yes.

I have situation that I think warrants a chargeback, I was just hoping to get some insight. On Feb 13th my fiancee and I went grocery shopping at the Schnucks in [redacted]. We normally just do a split-pay on the total cost since we have separate accounts. I run my card first, then she picks up the remainder, and she normally gets cash back. This time we went, she paid first and tried doing $50 cash back (around $178 total) but the register made it appear that the additional $50 was applied towards the remainder of the total instead of extra that would be refunded. The cashier seemed confused about it and called a manager over. It confused the manager as well, so she hit some buttons and the original total re-appeared.

We assumed this meant that the original charge was nulled and we did what we normally do and I ran my card first with her picking up the total. A few days later, after the receipt disappeared, my fiancee tells me that Schnucks charged her twice for $178.00. She called the store, and the manager in charge told her that accounting would review the claim and the money would be in her account by the end of the week. She still didn’t have the money after the weekend, so we printed out the page on her bank statement showing the two identical charges and went to the store.

The two managers on duty found a note in their office mentioning the claim and explained that there are three things that get verified when they get claims like this. First, they check the registers. They told us that their registers did not show an overage. Next, they review the stores receipts for the day, where they also said they did not find an overage. Finally, something gets reviewed by Corporate (she didn’t explain what they look at), and Corporate will decide if there needs to be a refund.

My fiancee received another call a few days later saying that they were giving her a refund. Here we are over a month later and Schnucks has still not returned the $178.00 to my fiancee. She went in one more time over the weekend, and the manager at the time said she would call Corporate and get back to her, which she hasn’t.

Would a chargeback be appropriate in this situation? We’ve tried multiple times to get them to give a refund, so would this just force their hands?

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