Bought from Xtravision? Check your credit card statement

I bought a mobile phone from Xtravision back in June and the €100 charge appeared on my June statement. However, they charged me again for it in October. I rang Xtravision and they refused to sort it out for me. Some points I picked out from the conversation though:

- they had some "glitch" in their computer system
- about 15,000 transactions were affected
- these 15,000 transactions all went through on the one day sometime at the beginning of October

So if you've bought anything from them over the last few months, check your statements folks, and if you've been affected don't expect much help from Xtravision, I'm still in dispute with them over this.


On the same subject of checking credit card paperwork, I spent €60 in a small shop (also in October). Normally I check the amount as I sign the credit card slip, but the assistant said "60 euros" as she handed the slip to me, so this time I didn't bother. It was only when I got home that I realised the till receipt had €60, but the credit card receipt had €90. Up till then I hadn't realised that some shops have to manually type the amounts in twice, making this quite an easy mistake to make. Happily they refunded the €30 straight away.

My eagle eyes saved me €130 in just one month, but it left me wondering if I had ever missed any other mistakes like this. My usual routine of checking for any odd transactions on my statement wouldn't have picked these errors up

Thanks PF, for the observations.

Is it possible to check your cc statement online?

ajapale

Ajapale - it depends on whether you are using a Bank CC with your online banking ie. I you bank online with BOI & you have a BOI Visa/Mastercard then you can check your transactions.

ninsaga

Thanks ninsaga,

Im with UB (banking and CC) and dont have the facility. It would be great to have the facility to drop the transactions into an excel spreadsheet and do various analyses including checking for anomolies.

Prehaps UB might 'get with the programme' soon.

ajapale

I have an MBNA CC and I can check my statements online. It's very handy!

For what it's worth PermanentTSB just added VISA account statements/transactions to their http://www.open24.ie (Open24) online banking system in the last week or so.

I bought a mobile phone from Xtravision back in June and the €100 charge appeared on my June statement. However, they charged me again for it in October.

If you complain in writing to your credit card company, enclosing copies of the relevant (June) receipt and disowning the October payment, they can investigate it with Visa or Mastercard International on your behalf.

Be careful though - keep everything in writing and respond quickly to all correspondence from your credit card company.

I queried a duplicate transaction (6 months after the original) with my card issuer once but the whole process was so slow - they sent me a form to sign, I sent it back, they investigated which took months then wrote back to me saying there was nothing they could do, I persisted etc. etc. Eventually they said that the original transaction was now too old to be resolved!

Needless to say I threatened to move my business elsewhere and they then promptly refunded the erroneous transaction to me.

MBNA

Sounds like a right pain in the bum, Monsieur Bond. I have to say, MBNA were great about it. They initially told me to contact Xtravision, but when I told them Xtravision wouldn't discuss it with me I was promptly transferred to the disputes dept, who sorted it out within weeks, with no forms or hassles to myself. They also froze the transaction after my first phone call so I wouldn't be paying interest on it. I didn't even think of that - they suggested it themselves

Re: MBNA

They also froze the transaction after my first phone call so I wouldn't be paying interest on it.

You wouldn't pay interest on it until the credit period (e.g. so may days after the bill has been issued) has elapsed unless it was a cash advance or you already had a non zero outstanding balance.

A few years back my own credit card was used for unauthorised online transactions even though I had never used it at all, never mind online, up to that point. I suspect that the card number was automatically generated and used on sites that did not check additional information such as holder's name, expiry date, billing address etc. I contacted my bank (PTSB) and they did a chargeback which proved that I had not authorised the transactions and so they cancelled all charges and interest. Nowadays some or all credit card agreements specify some sort of excess that the customer must meet in the even of unauthorised online (and other?) use. You need to read the terms & conditions of your credit card agreement to apprise yourself of such details.

Re: MBNA

Sounds like a right pain in the bum, Monsieur Bond. I have to say, MBNA were great about it

Click to expand...

Actually, it was MBNA I was dealing with myself!

They are normally very helpful, but these sort of queries can only (apparently) be resolved by the Fraud bureau in the UK, which only operates 9 - 5, M-F.

This, and the fact of having to document everything via snail mail, delayed everything.