Had to call one of my credit card companies about something on 3/27 and while talking with the CSR I noticed on my online activity statement that an auto-charge scheduled for 3/20 wasn’t showing as recent activity. I asked the rep if she saw the charge as either paid, pending or rejected and she said no. So I called the merchant, who said that the payment showed in their system as having gone through paid 3/20. Three days later it’s still not on my online activity statement. Anyone have any theories as to what might be going on with this payment?
Those types of transactions rely on massive databases. I work on such databases. I get 3 - 4 transactions a day as things to research and fix because of odd problems that we haven’t seen before or known problems that haven’t been universally fixed. It probably isn’t anything you have control over. There could be someone with the same name entered or maybe a card number that caused the system to fart it out.
All large databases have a team of people including business analysts, systems analysts, and programmers that struggle to keep them running day-to-day. They don’t just hum along with nobody watching and continually repairing the dike.
I am confident your transaction was kicked out as an exception somewhere and will be going through in the next day to months. There is also the odd chance that same database programmer will get sick of dealing with it and just delete it and you will never get charged. I have seen such things done when the cost for an oddball fix way exceeds the cost of a transaction and I have ordered such things myself although that is rare.
I’m not sure they’re all that rare, though. I have somewhere around one transaction a year on my debit card that never shows up- I’m about a hundred dollars up (to the bank’s detriment) as a result.
Of course, now that I’ve switched banks, it’ll probably never happen again…
Things like that happen. Yesterday I was checking my scheduled bill payments online, and noticed that according to my credit union, the last payments were made 2/2! But a closer examination of my activity log showed that the March payments went out on time. Just a glitch in the software somewhere. Nix panicus, but keep an eye on it just to be sure.
Shagnasty,
So THAT’s what happened to my Discover payment many years ago. The $1200 payment cleared Discover but never made it back to my credit union. No one at either institution was very concerned. After 6 months I closed the credit union account and spent the money on a new computer.
Learning is power!