Don’t you love it when merchants point their fingers at your credit card company and the credit card companies point their fingers at merchants? That’s what happened to me the $46.95 purchase made at Wal-Mart on 11/2/08 for the AC/DC track pack.

The credit card company said that it would take *8* days for the bogus transaction to be removed from my account. After being pressed they told me that I could go to the merchant and if the merchant called them they would remove the charge right away.

So, I called Wal-mart and was told to call their financial department at 479-277-2643. I did that and was told by them that they didn’t call credit card companies direct.

Gotta love it. I pressed on and was able to convince the lady to stay on the line for a conference call with my credit card company. After going through the security check and explaining I had the merchant on the line in a conference call the person transferred me to the security department.

Wait on hold for 5 minutes. Another person came on the line and listened to the story, looked at the account and said they would need to talk to the merchant on the merchant line. The merchant gathered a fax number and faxed my credit card company a statement saying there was only one charge. The response?

It would take 2-3 days for the bogus charge to be removed from my account. Why, I asked does it take this long? It was my understanding that this charge would be removed as soon as the merchant talked to them. Did that and it still takes 2-3 days?

I don’t understand these credit card companies. I mean, I do. If you want to charge something that takes what 30 seconds? But when there is a mistake it takes several days to fix? How does that work? Also, this one really blows my mind.

When you go to pay your bill online it takes two days to post your payment unless you want to pay $15 for a "rush payment" service and then your payment can be posted within one minute of midnight the same day.

When I wrote last week about not letting the credit card companies use you, instead you need to use them. They make it more difficult for that kind of relationship to exist, don’t they?

At the end of the day, I had over an hour of my time forever used up getting a duplicate charge removed. Wal-mart was more helpful than my credit card company, but they both forced me to do most the work, which is not cool. They shouldn’t have put the customer in the middle. Looking at the statement above it’s pretty obvious that it’s a mistake. How often does somebody make the same purchase tax included two days apart at the same store?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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