How to deal with the "shame" of POS machines

When swiping credit card consumption becomes a habit, there are many small problems accompanying it. When I took out the bank card and swiped the card to check out, the POS machine did not cooperate. Once, twice, three times... I breathed a sigh of relief, and the transaction was finally successful! Received a bank card statement only to find that a purchase has been double-counted several times.

One consumption generates two bills

Recently, Ms. Liu encountered such a situation of "dishonesty" of the POS machine.

During the Golden Week, Miss Liu and her boyfriend passed by a home appliance city. The eye-catching poster at the door - "During May 1st, the store will launch a large discount on mobile phone purchases" suddenly attracted their attention. A month ago, Ms. Liu took a fancy to a newly launched mobile phone, but the mobile phone had just been launched, and the high price made her discouraged. "There is a discounted phone purchase now, why don't you go and have a look." Unable to resist the temptation, Miss Liu and her boyfriend found the phone they liked at the mobile phone counter. Sure enough, the discount launched by the merchant is worthy of the name. A few weeks ago, the price of this mobile phone was more than 4,000 yuan. This time, after a few back and forth with the promoter, the price of 3,800 yuan was finally negotiated.

The price of the mobile phone has reached her psychological price. Ms. Liu handed the opened mobile phone ticket and credit card to the cashier. She thought everything was fine, but after swiping the card and entering the password, the billing machine was stuck. After waiting for a long time, I couldn't get the bill. The cashier told Miss Liu: "It may be that the credit card transaction failed, and the card needs to be swiped again." Password, Miss Liu stared nervously at the billing machine, but did not expect that the billing machine was still like me, motionless, and did not move for a while.

"This bank card may not be swiped, do you have any other bank cards?" Thanks to the boyfriend's wallet with another credit card, re-swipe the card and enter the password..."Squeaky squeaky" accompanied by The billing machine slowly uttered a single sound, and Miss Liu breathed a sigh of relief, "Finally!" After her boyfriend signed the bill, Miss Liu finally took back her new mobile phone.

The freshness brought by the new mobile phone to Miss Liu has not yet passed, and the bank bill has arrived. But what surprised her was that her current bill actually showed an arrears of 5,100 yuan. Although credit card consumption is usually not recorded, but according to your monthly consumption situation, it is impossible to have such a high overdraft amount. After carefully checking the bill details, Ms. Liu discovered that a transaction of 3,800 yuan during the "May Day" period was also included. Calculated according to the time and consumption, this should be the consumption of the mobile phone.

Ms. Liu couldn't help but have a lot of doubts: at that time, the bill was not issued, which was a failed transaction, not to mention that she did not sign to confirm, according to the rules of credit card use, how could such a transaction be deducted? Another question is, if you have to deduct money like this, you have made two failed transactions, why is there only one deduction on the bill? In fact, many card swipers have had similar personal experiences in situations like Miss Liu's. Even if the card swipe is unsuccessful, the POS machine may still be deducted by "cheating".

Error deduction due to communication failure

According to the rules of credit card use, the transaction cannot be considered successful without the signature of the cardholder. But in the case of failure to swipe the card, how can the money in the card be deducted?

With such a question, the reporter asked a staff member of the bank's credit card center for advice. He told the reporter that this is because the simple-looking POS is easy to swipe the card for consumption, but it is actually connected to the "Sifang" - the merchant's POS machine The acquiring bank to which the terminal, POS machine belongs, the issuing bank to which the cardholder belongs, and the system of China UnionPay. For example, when the cardholder swipes the card at a merchant's POS machine, the POS machine will send out a data packet, which is first accepted by the acquirer, and then forwarded to the card issuing bank through the UnionPay system; The process is sent back to the billing machine connected to the merchant's POS terminal, and the output document is confirmed by the cardholder.

It is precisely because of such a process of data transmission through multiple nodes, if any node has a problem, "usually, through each node, the longest time cannot exceed 10 seconds", After this time, the transaction may fail. "However, there will be a problem in this way. For example, the data has been sent to the card issuer, and the card issuer confirms the deduction; however, there is an obstacle when the data is sent back, causing the transaction to fail. This consumption is likely to have been billed. The money has been deducted."

It turned out that it was for this reason that the card swipe was "dishonested" by the POS machine. "However, this is not the only reason for the failure to swipe the card." The staff member further explained that in addition to the failure of the communication line, the reasons for the unsuccessful transaction are: the host of the card issuing bank is closed for some reason, the POS equipment is faulty, the password is incorrect or the magnetic Damaged strips, improper operation, etc. So not all failed transactions will result in such erroneous chargebacks.

How to recover the double debit as soon as possible

I understand the reason why the transaction will be deducted if the transaction is unsuccessful. For the cardholder, it is more important to recover the wrong deduction. When Ms. Liu encounters such a situation, how can she recover the wrongly deducted payment as soon as possible?

Actually, due to the wide range of network problems involved, there are not a few cases of disputed deductions in the credit card center. Therefore, the credit card centers of various banks have also introduced different methods to solve the problem of "cheating" of POS machines.

After the interview, the reporter learned that once the cardholder encounters "dishonesty" of the POS machine and has any objection to a certain consumption, he should immediately report it to the customer service staff through the phone of the credit card center of the issuing bank. The card issuing bank will contact the acquirer and the merchant as soon as possible to confirm whether the payment has been debited repeatedly or incorrectly. If the bank can resolve the deduction within a repayment period, the double debited consumption will not appear on the bill.

But in real life, many people often find out the wrong deduction only after they get the bill and check the lighting carefully. Several banks' credit card centers handle bills that have already been generated in different ways. Generally speaking, there are two processing methods. One is to postpone the payment of the consumption after receiving the bill and filing a dispute application; the other is to repay the bill according to the current bill. refunded to the cardholder's account.

The credit card centers of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Bank of China use the former method. Shanghai Pudong Development Credit Card has a special business called "Priority Dispute Handling", which means that the cardholder has priority for disputed consumption. As long as the cardholder submits a "dispute application" for a certain consumption through the customer service phone of the credit card center, even if it is listed on the credit card statement, the cardholder can suspend the repayment of this consumption. When the issuer confirms that the consumption is a duplicate or wrongly debited item through the settlement results with the merchant and the acquirer, it will send a notice to the cardholder to inform the cardholder that the disputed consumption has been processed. However, if due to the negligence of the cardholder, the "dispute application" is made by mistake, the result of the liquidation shows that it is not a wrong deduction, and the cardholder has not repaid the credit card on time, and can only accept the bank's penalty interest.

The disputed consumption method of the Bank of China Credit Card Center is basically similar. If the cardholder finds the disputed consumption on the bill and reports it to the credit card center, the current repayment can also be repaid according to the amount minus the disputed consumption. If the bank determines the result of the disputed consumption, the bank will automatically help the cardholder to reduce or exempt it.

The rest of the credit card centers of some banks adopt the method of "payment first, offset later", that is to say, even if there are repeated deductions, the cardholder is better to follow the amount on the bill. Repay the credit card balance in full, and after the bank gets the results of the investigation, the money will be credited back to the cardholder's account and used to offset the next period of consumption. If the cardholder gets the money back, if the bank stipulates that the credit card "overpayment fee" will be charged, there may be an additional fee.

It seems that even if the POS machine is "cheating", the cardholder does not need to worry too much, as long as the card issuer is informed of the situation in time, it can be solved. In addition, cardholders should pay more attention when swiping the card for consumption, especially in the case of repeated card swiping, they should check their real-time debit information through the Internet, telephone and ATM terminals in a timely manner; some credit cards also Provide card swipe SMS reminder service, using this service, cardholders can also easily understand the deduction situation. Relevant experts also remind cardholders that because the actual ID number management of many POS terminals is confusing, if cardholders can accurately provide the name of the merchant when informing the bank of repeated card swiping, it will also help to speed up the recovery of the repeated card. The process of debiting.