Hello all, wondering if anyone could add some insight…
My wife went to visit home and charged two things on separate credit cards at Universal Studios back in March (or April). This month, those two charges showed up on the statement (for each credit card). First thought we had was some unauthorized user, since the “sale date” on the CC’s was August 13th, and my wife wasn’t anywhere close to southern CA. She then told me about the two charges back earlier this year.
So, at this point I’m assuming the charges actually WERE from March/April, but for some reason aren’t showing up until now. We’re going to look back at the statements from earlier this year to make sure they weren’t posted then. Assuming they weren’t we’ll go ahead and pay them now.
My question basically is, why did it take so long, and can they do this? I would assume yes, but I didn’t find anything in the CC user agreement about this subject.
Not sure if this helps but I’ve had this happen to me once. I ordered something on-line and it was put into the temporary transaction part of my on-line CC statement. Then it dissappeared with no trace. Finally 4 months later it showed up on my bill. Struck me as kinda odd but I guess it’s something that happens.
You’re right, it would be Universal Studios. I’m guessing maybe they lost (??) the slips, and “found” them this month, since both appeared on each credit card on the same sale date.
Suppose I will call the CC company in the morning and ask about it.
Vicera, you nailed it on your last post. More than likely the transactions were paper based - that is to say you signed the charge slip and the merchant mailed it (or should have) to the CC company. The receipts were either not mailed or lost in transit, found later or re-created, and posted in August. This scenario can happen with electronic transactions but it requires multiple failure points and is exceedingly rare.
Re-creating paper transactions is a time consuming process and can’t even begin until someone notices that the transactions are missing. I’ll wager that it took weeks, at least, to determine that a batch of charge slips were lost and then the process of determining which particular slips were in the lost batch took the remaining time.
Yes, the merchant can hit your charge card for a valid debt, even if the posting of the charge is delayed. Mistakes happen and while you don’t seem to be trying to skip on a legitimate debt, many people would. Laws have been established to protect the merchants in a case like this.
That said, do make sure it is not a duplicate charge. I have had a hotel charge me a second time over a year after the original stay. I produced my old CC bills with the original charge and got the duplicates dropped. The hotel’s position was “We had computer problems around that time and just re-billed everybody”. :rolleyes:
I’ve had this happen on occasion. I’ve also had a string of “lost” transactions on my debit card - the one that comes right out of my checking account. There were a few days many, many years ago that maybe half the transactions I made never showed up on my statement. One of them was a $1000 deposit on a new oven/range. I pulled the $1K out of the balance in my checkbook, and kept it out for about 2 years after the transaction date. At one point, the bank I was using completely changed around their debit card system, and issued me a new debit card with a new number, and told me the old number would no longer work. About a year after that happened - almost three years from the original transaction - I needed the cash and decided to delete the transactions from those days from my checkbook. Altogether, came to about $1500. I still expect the bank to call me one day and say “Hey, remember these transactions?” but so far, they never have.
