February 4,2009
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News: What's Up w/This Old Credit Card Charge?
A recent flap is making the news concerning a Seattle fast food restaurant merchant named "Organic To Go" blindsiding people with old credit card charges that go back two years. Having worked in the credit card industry on the merchant side, I know the frustrations of management when they realize their trusted Night Auditor has been unfaithful. What about the consumer side? How does reality mesh with perception? With so many slimy scammers, unethical politicians and crooked CEOs out there, how can the typical credit card consumer believe things would be any different in the credit card industry?
In the credit card industry, the person assigned to submit a business' credit card transactions every night is called the ‘Night Auditor'. In larger businesses, this is almost always an underpaid person who only wears this ‘hat' for an hour or so at the end of the day, long enough to collect the day's transactions, validate totals and submit them (all done by computer, of course) to a processor (like Heartland). In most cases (having worked with a thousand of them), the Night Auditors are illiterate concerning the credit card industry and some of them could care less. This errs on the side of the consumer at the merchant's expense.
The problem is even more exacerbated when a new business is set up and with small businesses. In these cases, even the management is in the steep learning curve. My favorite was Wendy's because the food was good and they were plagued with problems where thousands of credit card patrons were never charged. So what happens when they finally figure it out and try to collect on those old charges? Legally, if we ‘dance to the music', we're obligated to ‘pay to the piper'. What about the ‘blindside effect' though? Most merchants will collect where they can and ‘forgive' those who complain. These businesses are neither corrupt nor being sneaky, however. They're just trying to straighten out their books from the harm of inept Night Auditors.