iDine and returns/credits/negative charges
 

Has anyone had reason to get a negative charge on an iDine registered card?

It would be very rare to have returns at restaurants, but say you were doing a large order and put a deposit for some equipment on your card then had the deposit credited back.

If it were $50, would you lose 500 miles? Assuming no other transactions pending at iDine, how could they do that with the FF account anyway?

Well, two possibilities as to "how".

One, airlines have partners that can deduct FF miles that you use for something other than the FF program's metal, so why shouldn't iDine be able to issue a negative number of miles in such a case? (Of course, if you had already used up the miles at the FF end and never wanted to use that FF program again, that would push out the question simply to the FF program level.)

Two, iDine could simply treat it as an internal negative, which would mean that if you ever used iDine for that FF program again, it would detect the returned miles at THAT point.

My hunch is the latter: they'd put, say, a 500 mile "hold" on your account against accumulating more points. It would be so rare that folks would get money back, that it doesn't seem worth their while to re-configure their system for it.

Thanks for the thoughts.

I had a large off-site order for a group, and I asked them to leave some equipment. I offered to put a deposit if necessary on my credit card, to be refunded upon return of the equipment.

They ended up not requiring a deposit, so I never had the charge back. Thus it will remain a mystery, at least for now.

I knew someone who went to a participating restaurant, where they overcharged her (almost x2). She pointed out the error, had it corrected but the first, larger charge was credited to her idine account.

The miles were never deducted from her account.