It seems Taco Bell charged my credit card twice for the same transaction. What is the course of least hassle for all involved? Dispute the charge with the card company (seems easy enough) or bring a print-out to the restaurant in question and demand a free lunch as compensation from the manager?

It is a minor mistake, so I don't want to cause a paperwork nightmare for anyone over the matter of $3.80. However, I have an irrational sense of justice, so I refuse to ignore the error. Any thoughts?

9/19/2010 11:55:00 PM

Just print it out and take it in. 99% of the time the manager just doesn't want to deal with a drawn out issue and will give you something free.

9/19/2010 11:56:51 PM

I would just bring it to Taco Bell. This happened to me at a grocery store once, easy fix.

9/19/2010 11:57:09 PM

you should do both

dispute the charge with your CC company AND go in and demand the free lunch

be a real dick about it

9/20/2010 12:46:03 AM

Before you dispute it with your financial institution, you should go to the merchant and work out a resolution. If one fails, then yeah, I would go see your FI. The dispute afidavit should only be a one pager asking when/where/how much the transaction was that is being disputed and that you aren't filing a false dispute because that shit is a felony.

9/20/2010 12:51:04 AM

disputing a claim was a very simple process for me

someone bought memberships to match.com and a couple porn sites with my debit card number and all i had to do was go into a branch and answer a few questions.

9/20/2010 12:59:01 AM

I would just take the transaction receipt to TB the next time I wanted to eat there.

9/20/2010 1:26:00 AM

The lunch isn't free if you already paid for it...

9/20/2010 11:09:55 AM

Good point... maybe I should demand two free lunches?

9/20/2010 11:26:11 AM

Just call the cc company, they'll see the swipes and fix it easy as pie.

9/20/2010 11:27:09 AM

Out of the 30,000 transactions I have made, a double charge occurred only once on my customer's credit card.

I keep my print outs of my settles and showed that she was only charged once... and at the bottom of the slip is the total that is added up. I checked my bank account, and the deposit matched.

That means, I didn't gain anything from the double charge so I didn't give them their money back.

I then contacted my processor and they had no record of the double charge.

It ended up being the bank's fault, the bank admitted it was their fault and pulled the money twice.

9/20/2010 1:03:44 PM

This happened at cookout recently but I've never had any other issues in close to 10 years. I just called Chase and they were more than happy to issue a refund.

9/21/2010 2:43:28 PM

i thought most banks/cc companies would automatically deny a duplicate charge. i know wachovia does

9/21/2010 10:20:11 PM

I once had a miskeyed charge at cookout--my ~2.50 milkshake was keyed in as 22.50. This was on my debit card. I just called the bank and they said they'd fix it--didn't have to fill out a form or anything. Easy as pie (or as milkshake in my case).

9/21/2010 10:45:59 PM

Had this happen at an out of town fast food place so I couldn't just walk in and talk to them about it. Gave them a call and they reversed the charge, easy as that.

9/22/2010 7:33:02 AM