Discover Card ripoff slow transaction post to cancel O% rate on balance transfer Wilmington Delaware

You stated:

"This changed however in September 2005. On September 8, 2005 I purchased a T-Shirt online. According to Discover Card's statement the transaction date was Sep.9, but the post date was Sep. 11. I contacted the vendor to see who was responsible for the delay. The vendor claimed that there was no delay on their part. So it could only be Discover Card who was responsible for the delay."

1) Thank you, Dave, for having educated yourself about the way the offer works before participating. We appreciate that. You understand the charges have to POST to meet the conditions of the offer.

2) The Vendor was incorrect, largely due to a misunderstanding of how things work. For online orders, a vendor runs your card # to make sure funds are available, which creates the TRANSACTION date. After that point, Discover must wait for their merchant upload to finish processing and therefore POST your charge. ALL CHARGES CAN TAKE UP TO 72 HOURS TO POST. Period.

You asked: Could there have been a deliberate delay on Discover Card's part?

NO. I understand your willingness to believe that based on the fact that you are angry that you lost your rate. Rather than reacting with potentially libelous accusations, perhaps you could call the center and discuss the matter with a representative. I see you indicated you had contacted Discover Card and had yet to hear back, so I am under the impression that you did not call but either wrote a letter (14 day minimum response time VIA good old snail mail) or emailed, in which case you should be hearing back from us shortly. If not, give us a call. Technology isn't perfect and something may have malfunctioned, causing a loss of your email. That will sound like an excuse to you, but it is just reality. Everyone has system errors from time to time. They aren't a plot or some premeditated plan to ruin your day.

Lastly, you state: "I also question Discover Card's ethics. Could there have been a memo or verbal instructions telling employees to delay postings on accounts like mine so that the 0% APR on balance transfer could be wiped out? Only time will tell if there's a fraud going on here."

Again, you are treading on potentially libelous ground. I am dismayed to see that consumers have such ideas, but after seeing Erin Brockovich, I guess everyone is looking for evil where none exists. There are no such memos floating around. I should not be surprised by your mean, groundless accusation but I am not. After all, some customers will do anything to avoid accepting the blame for their own actions. You, at least, know the terms of the offer. I believe you made an honest attempt to honor them. I don't see why a customer service rep wouldn't be able to adjust your rate back to the 0%, provided you haven't had excessive prior fee or finance charge adjustments. Your problem is common. The misunderstanding of the timeframe for posting of a charge is common, also.

Give us a call if this does not get resolved for you. Given that your report is so new, I imagine that if it hasn't been addressed already, it will be addressed soon.

This is a reply to Kate. Thank you for the explanation. Although Discover Card did not reply to my email, you offered a reasonable explanation. The purpose of my post was to curtail any possible wrongdoing on Discover Card's part. The easiest way that I am aware of to find others who have experienced the same as I is to use this site. Evidently nothing major is going on here. It's not a crime to suggest possiblities in order to encourage others to come forward with their experiences. I've already transferred my balance from Discover Card to a more competitive rate elsewhere. I checked other online purchases on other cards but haven't noticed any with more than one day difference between transaction and post dates. However, as you indicated Kate, that could be the vendor's slowness in finishing the process. The purchase was actually a donation (for which I received a T-shirt) to a non-profit organization. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

I'm just curious. Does Discover Card have you scan the Ripoff Report and other consumer websites to offer advice and perform customer service?

Or do you just do it for fun?

Well, that's an odd question, "R" from OR...but I've answered it before.

I come here because I want to. Discover Card has no involvement in my postings, contrary to popular belief. Are you a friend of Dina's? GRIN.

I come here because I find that many consumers don't take the time to educate themselves about their own finances and then they come here to cry and whine and point the finger at Discover and accuse the company of all manner of wrongdoing.

I wouldn't exactly say that I "Enjoy" it...but what keeps me coming back is the hope that I might be able to get through to a few folks left on this planet that haven't ruined their own credit due to laziness (seeing the Cardmember Agreement but not actually reading it and comprehending it) or assumptions about what they feel credit should be like.

Thanks for asking! I'm always happy to clear this one up. FYI, I don't just post to Discover's board. I have put in my two-cents about a lot of other interesting topics at this site.

Hope to "see" you around here again!

Thanks for your response, David!

I'm sorry to see that you went with another company, but ultimately customers have to decide what is best for them and what isn't. I've noticed that other companies do sometimes post their charges more quickly than Discover, but people tend to forget Discover is the "baby" of the biz...we are the newest major credit card in the US industry. As such, I would not doubt that in order to thrive, we've had to woo our vendors with competitive merchant processing deadlines. As your experience has shown, sometimes what is a positive for vendors is a negative for consumers. We have to maintain a delicate balance between the businesses accepting our cards and the customers using our cards.

With the recent development of such "conditional" offers (keeping a low balance transfer rate for an indeterminate period of time in exchange for, say, two charges a month) we are constantly having to review the impact that such offers have on our business partners and our consumers. I would agree that we are not as competitive as we could be with this, and I hope that it changes soon.

Thanks again for your repsonse!

David, you weren't incorrect in thinking that Discover keeps trascations from posting. While granted, the posting date in most case does depend on when the merchant sends in the transaction feed to the credit card company, but with Discover, if that feed is sent the day before or the day of your closing date, it will not post until the day after your statement cycles. Of course, NO ONE at Discover is either aware of this or will admit to it, but it is the case.

I happen to have 2 Discover accounts. One that had the same 0% offer with 3 purchases (close date is the 2nd) and the other just a regular card that I use for daily transactions (close date is the 16th). I too made a transaction the day before my statement closed (Feb 1st) and the transaction didn't post until the 3rd (my statement closes on the 2nd). I didn't understand this because I had also made a charge on my regular card at the same store and that transaction posted.

After this happened and everyone at Discover told me it was the merchant's fault, I did a test and the next month on the 1st, I made charges on both cards for the same amount at the same store all within a couple minutes of each other. The charges to my regular card posted while the charges to my 0% card did not.

I spoke to the merchant and they said they have no control over the feeds. It's all done electronically and there is nothing manual about it.

And of course Discover can't explain it and they won't investigate it. They just say that the merchant must have done something.

Mind you, if you look at past statements on my regular card, you'll see that NOTHING with a transaction date the is either on or the day before the statement closes posts that day. They ALL post the date after the statement cycles.

Still, no one at Discover can explain that or will investigate.

Riddle me that Batman!