I’m probably the billionth person to ask why banks love to take money out of your account at the speed of light, but when it comes to putting it back in, they’re all Scarlett O’Hara clones and they’ll think about that tomorrow.
F’zer accidentally paid the dentist with the debit card instead of a credit card today. He caught the mistake before he’d even signed the receipt and the receptionist said she’d cancel the transaction right away.
I happened to log into the bank web site about the same time and saw that our “available balance” was in parentheses, which is never good news. So I, not knowing what had happened, called the bank, got a very cheerful and helpful lady who explained what had happened (“Your debit card has put $450 on hold”) and immediately transferred money from our money-market account to cover that and make sure we didn’t bounce the transaction.
I just looked at the bank’s web site again, twelve hours later, and that whole transaction is still out in limbo somewhere. Our “ledger balance” shows the balance-plus-$450, and the “available balance” shows the balance-minus-$450. And now, of course, we’re headed into a weekend when heaven only knows what will be done to fix the mistake.
I wonder if the banking system was set up like that deliberately? It’s been going on so long that I have no reason to believe that it wasn’t. Grrrrr.
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