Posted on 08/26/2022 9:56:38 AM PDT by 4Runner
Three purchases made by spouse on August 18, 2022 for $54.42, 49.04, and 8.65 were double-debited to our checking account by Amazon, resulting in a $126.14 overcharge within one week, which its Customer Care Center assured us, on Saturday, August 20, would be credited back to the checking account within 3-5 days.
However, as of Friday, August 26 seven days later, no such credit had been received. (Spouse orders from Amazon on an almost weekly basis. We spend a lot of money at that site.)
A second call to Amazon just this morning resulted in an hour and fifteen minutes speaking with a male in Myanmar or Bangladesh who kept trying to verify the credentials on the account but claimed he was unable to access the debit card spouse had used for the charges as he could not obtain from me the code number he had sent to her Outlook email account.
I tried to access her email but could not, despite having both the user ID and the password. Microsoft kept telling me the user ID was invalid or too many attempts had been made to access the account. Nonsense.
We never use spouse's Outlook email account, the one we paid $69.00 for just so she could have email without pop-up ads.
Besides, AMAZON had already promised in an email to us last Saturday that the overcharges would be refunded to us. Despite this fact, Amazon apparently has different scripts for the same problem and you don't get the same response two times running.
The first Customer Service Rep last Saturday was an America woman named Chennel. The second one this morning was named David and he couldn't pronounce his own name correctly, living as he does in either Myanmar of Bangladesh.
Bottom line-- even our bank, TRUIST, was unable to access any of the charges made on spouse's debit card which is a different number than mine but both go to the same checking account.
In desperation, I told spouse she needs to stop using her debit card linked to our account at TRUIST, and we will have to open a new checking account for her at a different bank so she can have autonomous access to funds.
This is not the first problem encountered between TRUIST Bank and Amazon. Charges don't show up, items are not delivered, then charges are automatically cancelled and card is suspended and we receive fraud warnings from TRUIST Bank.
The debit card issued to me personally by TRUIST however works perfectly and I told spouse she will need to use mine until further notice. Ironically the checking account at Truist was opened in spouse's name.
This has been a nightmare, and we are now gun shy about having given Amazon access to our debit card numbers on its website.
If it is doing this on even one percent of its accounts on a daily basis that is a lot of cash money being taken from consumers without authorization, and not being refunded because people just don't want to go through this kind of hell to get their money back.
We had to contact the Fraud unit at TRUIST to file a complaint and that in itself was a nightmare call to some far eastern country. We do not know how long it will take TRUIST to get our money credited back to our account from ABSCONDIZON.
If anyone else has experienced these kinds of problems with this online retailer and your bank, please opine below, we would appreciate your suggestions/comments.
I’ve never had a problem with debit cards because I refuse to have one. I use credit cards, pay them off every month and get hundreds of bucks a year in cash back. I very seldom write a check, most everything is on auto-pay.
I always tell people to never use debit cards. As you noted, the money is taken from your account, and even though you can typically get it back, it’s gone until you file for it.
A credit card, in the other hand, offers much better fraud protection, and it’s not your money on the line until you pay it. Of course, one needs some discipline when using credit, but if you can pay the amount off each month, credit cards will save you money.
Additionally, you are paying for credit card use whether you use them or not, because the merchant fees are a business expense. These fees, typically a couple percentage points, are included in the item prices. So you might as well use a reward credit card if possible (assuming you pay it off regularly).
We once had both our credit and debit card numbers stolen at the same time (I assume a bank leak as we never used both cards at the same vendor). The credit card was turned off immediately by the credit card company when their algorithm detected a suspicious charge, while the fraudsters made several debit card transactions before I had to call the bank to turn that card off myself. That was it with debit cards for me.
BTW, I followed up with the vendors on the fraudulent charges. They were made in my name, but nothing else matched (obvious fraud). The purchases were shipped to an address in New York—not my state, obvious buyer/shipping address mismatch—to a person with a common Taiwanese last name, something like Cheng. I even found the house in Amazon street view, but I bet nothing ever happened to the thief. I did eventually get the money back in my account.
“We’ve always had excellent customer service when it was necessary.”
They treated me like a criminal. Instead of referring to a charge to my account they always referenced to it as my purchase.
A person at my bank noticed a high balance in my checking account because I was moving money around and said, “That’s dangerous if someone gets your debit card! I said, “That’s why I don’t have a debit card.” She just looked at me, like “Huh”.
I had credit troubles a while back and didn’t have a credit card. I set up a special account with a debit card and only kept a small amount in it to cover any purchases. No one ever cleaned it out but if they had tried they wouldn’t have gotten much.
Return the items.
“Get an Amazon credit card <or a reloadable gift card if she has spending issues) and pay it off in full every month.”
DO NOT PUT ANY CC INTO THE AMAZON WALLET!
I pay almost all my bills by credit card. No one charges me a penny.
You Do Not get thousands of dollars “given” to you!
Your spending on credit must be phenomenal for that kind of return!😟
It’s a joke how people lambast folks who use debit cards but run up thousands on credit!
Here’s an idea .. purchase what you can actually pay cash for!😮
With a debit card .. you can’t Overspend even if someone steals the cards access!
With a credit card, it’s possible to dig a hole so deep you can never climb out of and at the same time .. destroy the “credit” you’ve always depended on!🥴
Amazon fully supported the lockdowns that made them hundreds of millions or maybe billions of dollars in deliveries. They are no friend.
Its convenient to use a debit card. No credit card fees or interest, no need to make a payment. It makes sense if all it were was a way to transfer money. Unfortunately, its being used for many more reasons.
You’re right about using credit cards. Most people don’t know how that process works and what the advantage is, so allow me to explain it from the (first-person) perspective of a merchant.
When you initiate a credit card transaction your credit card info is transmitted to a merchant service company, who acts as an intermediary between the merchant (Amazon in this case) and the credit card company (visa, mastercard, etc.) The merchant service company gets a percent of the sale for their fees. This can be anywhere from 2-5%, plus other fixed fees per month and per transaction, depending on the terms that are negotiated with the merchant.
The merchant is responsible for anything they sell. If a merchant has invented a widget and sells 100,000 of them, all the money that constitutes is sent to them sans the merchant services fees. Likewise, if they sell any product, the transaction clears and the money is sent to them... but...
Here’s where it gets tricky and can be really expensive for the merchant.
IF the merchant has a sale from a stolen credit card that sale can be charged back to them by the credit card company when the card holder reports the transaction. This can also happen when a customer wants to return a purchase and is not allowed by the merchant for some reason. In either case, the customer complains to the credit card company about the transaction and the credit card company initiates a chargeback.
Chargebacks cost extra fees. In some cases, a single chargeback can cost over $125 (or more) even if the item that was fraudulently purchased costs much below that figure. This is because when a chargeback is initiated by the credit card company, the money for the “fraudulent” purchase is taken from the merchant service company and returned to the customer by the credit card company. The merchant service company then takes the money from the merchant to cover these transaction reversals, and charges fees just like a bank does for NSF checks.
If those 100,000 widgets come with a warranty that has to be honored by the merchant, the merchant must have the funds to cover replacements, repairs, or refunds to the customer. If they don’t or can’t then do so, the credit card company is contacted by the customer and a chargeback occurs, with all attendant fees and requirements.
You can probably see how this can turn into a bankrupting nightmare for the merchant. Merchant service companies generally require either a personal guarantee (owner of the company pays out of pocket to cover these events) or some sort of insurance to cover the fees, if the company cannot pay the fees directly.
Going back to Amazon- they are so huge that they likely have the most favorable of terms for chargebacks. But even then, because of their volume chargebacks become a huge profit destroyer, so in almost all cases their return process is very easy and favorable to the customer.
Merchant services companies use statistics via actuarial risk assessments similar to what insurance companies do to set rates. Some types of business are considered high-risk and get higher fees. High risk businesses can lose their merchant services if their chargeback rate goes over 5% of their sales revenue.
We have a separate account with a debit card and a balance less than $500. No fees, no credit company access. Kind of like a pre-paid card.
I pay my card balance every month, I pay no interest. I get 1-5% back on every transaction depending on the type and which things are paying 5% cash back at the time. Typical 5% cash back happens with gas, eateries and department stores for 3 months at a time.
Debit card are the Devil, do not let the bank give you one!
Yeah. I can see how that would be maddening.
TIPS FOR KIDS
Credit Card, not debit, can create an excellent credit score history for kids as well.
An investment guy at our credit union showed my children a print-out of a the credit check record sheet. On that financial record, every on time payment has a * in column. Also, paid in full is recorded.
This is what creates a Credit Bureau high score for users. He told my kids that the amount of purchase monthly didn’t matter. He even told them “just to purchase a pack of gum with their credit card !” as they will earn the same asterisk * paid on-time & in-full despite the small or large amount spent!
My kids also took out a “secured loan” [at least $200 loan held “secured” by credit union within their savings that they would be unable to be spent until loan paid off!]
In this way, my teens were able to earn a excellent repayment history for their “thin” financial record!!
You posted this ridiculous vanity. Several people have pointed out that credit cards offer much more protection than debit cards. This post also pointed out that some credit cards give cash back rewards.
If you don't like the advice, don't be a jerk about it. Just go to the next post.
It seems there is a common theme to this thread:
“Amazon sucks.”
“I rarely use Amazon”
“Do not buy from Amazon!!!!”
“They treated me like a criminal.”
So yeah, I have.
Do not miss it either.
Personally I don’t care what you think
And yet you respond. Interesting. Cue Artie Johnson.
because the bill is PAID, Not deferred.
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