I keep getting overcharged at the grocery store. Foul play?
Of course, there is no way for us to know whether or not the clerk is trying to rip you off $1.29 at a time, but I can't understand the possible motivation for doing so.  I would imagine that most people would catch this at some point, so for a store to consistently overcharge for something like this is really bad for business. They would be risking upsetting a customer all for the potential gain of $1.29. I have to assume that it is not malice, but incompetence.  We don't know what caused the clerk to be confused, but it is not really our concern. From what I can tell, you've gotten the right price in the end.  You were ultimately charged for two drinks, and the extra $1.29 that you were charged was refunded. Since it happened three times, you have to decide how badly you want these drinks in the future.  If you choose to return, you'll just have to expect the possibility that it will ring up incorrectly, and you'll have to get it fixed.  If that seems like too much hassle, then don't return to this store.
Maybe the prices aren't better always but there's a perceived higher quality. When you shop there, it feels like you're getting a better value. Who can forget two buck Chuck? And lots of their goods are repackaged. It's an open secret that some of the goods you buy there is name brand with a new box. TJ cultivates this image of being the place where they stuff expensive food into a new box and sell it half off. Shopping there feels like winning the lottery.  They could only do this by limiting their variety. A shame that the article points it out as if a failing, like they pay employees more despite this. It's just the opposite. I actually did this once. I wrote a large check along with a letter indicating that I would not be around to receive the next bill so I was prepaying. Not only did they credit the entire check, they didn't send that bill and listed the charges on the next month's bill. They must have done that by hand because there's no way the machines would have understood. Credit card, without a doubt. The reason is dispute resolution. If you dispute a charge on debit card - the money has left your account already, and if the dispute was accepted - you'll get it back. If. Eventually. In the mean time your overdraft will be missing $$$. For credit cards, you can catch a fraud action before the money actually leaves your pocket and dispute it then. In this case the charge is set aside, and you will only be required to actually pay if the dispute is rejected. I.e.: The money stays in your pocket, until the business proves that the charge is legit. In both cases, if the dispute is justified (i.e.: there was indeed a fraud) neither you nor the bank will lose money at the bottom line, it's just who's got the money during the dispute resolution process (which may be lengthy) that matters. "I was I a similar position as you, and sometimes credit bureaus might be difficult to deal with, especially when high amounts of money are involved. To make the long story short, someone opened a store credit card under my name and made a charge of around 3k. After reporting this to the bureaus, they did not want to remove the account from my credit report citing that the claim was ""frivolous"". After filing a police report, the police officer gave me the phone number for the fraud department of this store credit card, and after they investigated, they removed the account from my credit. I would suggest to do the following: Communicating with Creditors and Debt Collectors You have the right to:  Stop creditors and debt collectors from   reporting fraudulent accounts. After you give them a copy of a valid   identity theft report, they may not report fraudulent accounts to the   credit reporting companies. Get copies of documents related to the   theft of your identity, like transaction records or applications for   new accounts. Write to the company that has the documents, and include   a copy of your identity theft report. You also can tell the company to   give the documents to a specific law enforcement agency. Stop a debt   collector from contacting you. In most cases, debt collectors must   stop contacting you after you send them a letter telling them to stop.   Get written information from a debt collector about a debt, including   the name of the creditor and the amount you supposedly owe. If a debt   collector contacts you about a debt, request this information in   writing. I know that you said that the main problem was that your credit account was combined with another. But there might be a chance that identity theft was involved. If this is the case, and you can prove it, then you might have access to more tools to help you. For example, you can file a report with the FTC, and along with a police report, this can be a powerful tool in stopping these charges. Feel free to go to the identitytheft.gov website for more information." "Debit Cards have a certain processing delay, ""lag time"", before the transaction from the vendor completes with your bank. In the US it's typically 3 business days but I have seen even a 15 day lag from Panera Bread. I guess in the UK, payment processors have similar processing delays. A business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime, as that's very expensive. Whatever be the lag time, your bank is supposed to cover the payment you promised through your card. Now if you don't have agreements in place (for example, overdraft) with your bank, they will likely have to turn down payments that exceed your available balance. Here is the raw deal: In the end, the responsibility to ensure that your available balance is enough is upon you (and whether you have agreements in place to handle such situations) So what happened is very much legal, a business is not obliged to run its payment processing in realtime and no ethics are at stake. To ensure such things do not happen to me, I used to use a sub-account from which my debit card used to get paid. I have since moved to credit cards as the hassle of not overdrawing was too much (and overdraft fees from banks in the US are disastrous, especially for people who actually need such a facility)" "&gt;What’s more, some experts argue that retailers make up for the swipe fees by quietly raising the cost of their goods.   Are the ""experts"" arguing that saying it's a bad thing? They're implying it is, with that ""quietly raising the cost of their goods.""  Retailers adjust the cost of their goods to account for the costs of business. Credit card processing is a cost of business, just like labor and electricity. Of course if should be factored into prices." Right, he wrote that and is busted for price-gouging in multiple states (New York, California), so perhaps he's not really following his own model?  I don't associate corporate social responsibility (CSR) with deliberately overcharging customers. &gt; Queue the increased prices at the grocery store  Nope, we will eat the rise in cost. Grocery stores are in an all war of attrition and the ones who don't keep prices low are going to lose all their customers.      Really the only thing going up in cost lately that saw a retail raise was Asparagus, but that was due to rain. I work in the retail software industry, and can confirm this is a major problem right now.  There are several very popular point of sale packages that hackers have written RAM scrapers for.  Yes, there is (a lot) of credit card fraud traced back to these hacks. "Surprisingly, I got weird looks when I say ""I think I need a 2nd grocery bag"". I sometimes have to say things like: ""This bag looks heavy. I lost $2.50 of blueberries once because I was too cheap to pay $0.10 for a second bag""" I was part of a class action against First Tennessee Bank for this same shady shit.    Got my check in the mail last week for my portion.   $21.12  At one point, they hit me five times for overdraft charges, ($175).   No risk for them, charge the fuck out of you on the front end, pay back pennies on the back.  It's a win/win for them.   I joined a credit union (SkyOne) and love them, will never look back. "First of all, this does not sound like a debit situation. Every debit has to be authorized by the entry of a pin code. So, the hotel could not have arbitrarily created a new debit charge. Usually, hotel charges are credit charges. Once they have your credit card number, they can charge anything they want to the credit card. If it is an accidental double charge, you can call the hotel and ask them to refund $100 or whatever the mistake was plus your overdraft fee. In all probability they will refund any double charge, but not agree to refund the fee. You can also contest the charge and do a ""chargeback"" of the amount which was double charged. You will probably not be able to collect the overdraft fee that you got from the hotel unless you sue them in small claims court, or you luck out and the hotel agrees to refund the fee as well." "I doubt there is anything you can do to convince them you paid, outside of just talking to them, which it seems you already tried. These are the possibilities I can think of for how this happened: IMHO, the most likely scenario is #4. If 1 or 3 happened you'll never see your money again, but the other 3 possibilities leave open the option of the error being discovered in the future. My suggestion, if the copay is small, is to pay it again, ask for a receipt, and ask them to make a note in the system that you claim you already paid, and ask them to ""be on the look-out"" for any discrepancies in that amount. This way, (with a good amount of luck), if they find it or discover the error (from another customer asking about the credit, or an accounting cash surplus), they can refund it to you." Find a way to raise the cash needed to pay the store back, plus penalties.  Be humble and apologetic.  You have committed fraud.  Depending on the amount, it may be a felony.  Be an adult, settle the debt.  If not, they have grounds to open a complaint with law enforcement.  Your county jail probably has a number of residents who are paper hangers. Not exactly. From OP's X-post, this appears like textbook tortious interference.  If it were me, I'd demonstrate to the customer why they are getting a better deal and at the same time, I'd have my attorney send a C&amp;D to the offending competitor.