MikeMpls

Sounds like there were lots of similar glitches ...

CBS Local Sacramento: Call Kurtis: Southwest Billing Glitch Leaves Customers With No Way to Pay Bills

The billing issue affected customers across the country, although the airline hasn’t told CBS13 how many.

Cobian booked her ticket with a debit card tied directly to her bank account.

In an online statement, Southwest blames the duplicate charges on a “website performance issue” after Friday’s half off sale to celebrate reaching 3-million Facebook fans.

The airline said Saturday it knew of the problem and was processing refunds and would reimburse customers all of their overdraft fees.

Ouch!

trigs

Never use a debit card.

mritty

Oh please. This is not the customer's fault for what card she used. This is Southwest's fault, 100%, in every way. It was insanely unacceptable, to the point of reprehensible on their part, to have such a godawful system. That bug NEVER should have been allowed to happen. Their entire IT department should be fired, as should absolutely everyone in charge of it.

bigbuy

I'll second that. Too much risk IMO. You get protections with a cc. Yeah, I know the banks promise protections, but when your account gets cleaned out, you're left with the aftermath of getting the funds back in and dealing with all the bounced checks etc. Only thing I worry about is getting kidnapped, taken to an ATM and then getting murdered because I've got no ATM card, no debit card, no pin on CC and would not know how to use an ATM even if I had that stuff.

chinatraderjmr

I think UA is hiring
Seriously, do you realize that almost every airline forum on FT has someone that posts the same comment. "get rid of the IT dept" XX uses the worst system, blah blah blah
Over at SQ, it was the computer opening all F & C inventory to partners for awards, at UA it was 4 miles for a F tkt to HKG, LY charged to little tax, BA charged to much tax, etc, etc. admittedly, this situation w South West is horrendous. Many people were severely inconvienenced. However, South West is paying any fees (as they should) and other then a few heart attacks when balances were checked, no one is out anything. Every computer system at every airline screws up. Some more often then others but they are all just computers. There will always be glitches and mistakes, it's just part of life

lsed

Great first post!

Lol

You can always set a limit on your debit card as well

mritty

It's not that its horrendous (though it is). It's that it's not an isolated incident. SW's IT dept has a track record of abysmal upkeep on their systems. It is not this one incident that leads me to suggest their department needs an overhaul. It is the consistent and highly apparent pattern of continually doing a sub-standard job in nearly all aspects of system maintenance and development.

Not true. They are paying overdraft fees. Period. Absolutely no reports I've seen of them paying the late fees for any other bills that were missed due to customers not having any money in their accounts with which to pay their bills for utitlity, rent, mortgage, credit card, etc. If you've seen some evidence that they are doing so, please by all means let me know. I would truly LOVE to stand corrected on this one.

Again, not true. See above. In addition to the monetary fees, not having money with which to pay your credit card bills has a hit to your personal credit score and credit report. Again, I have not seen Southwest make any assurance that they would work with any customers to repair and clean these reports.

No. No computer system in the world "screws up". PROGRAMMERS screw up. SYS ADMINS screw up. DATABASE ADMINISTRATORS screw up. PEOPLE screw up. This is not to be blamed on random machines, on gremlins chewing on wires. This was human error, 100%, and the human beings responsible should have action taken against them.

I am a software engineer. I have worked as such for an international financial institution for about 7 years. If I ever made "screw ups" like this that cost my company god knows how much money and resulted in even more bad press, you can bet your butt I would not have a job the next day. Nor should I.

tyfabes

And I will third that. Paying anything online (other than taxes) with a debit card is just asking for trouble.

However, according to some recently passed legislation, consumers are only responsible for fraudulent transactions only up to $50 of the purchase. Seeing as though the cardholder did not authorize the absurdly high transaction amount, this is fraudulent in my book.

pirossalma

Without absolving SW:

With ANY debit card, you have the choice of:
a/ refusing any charge that would exceeds your limit
b/ letting through those charges, but accepting overdraft fees

My recommendation: use option one.

formeraa

The key issue with debit cards is that the money comes directly out of your checking account.

I had a co-worker in tears because her dentist accidentally processed an expensive payment twice to her debit card. The dentist was closed for the weekend. The bank said that it would take up to 2 weeks to remove the double charge. Meanwhile, she had no money to live on for the next week.

That's why I suggest (if at all possibe) to have a credit card or two for all online purchases. It has more protection and, most importantly, it doesn't debit directly from your banking account.

trigs

After a few decades in software design and development I can tell you that every large project ships with bugs. Microsoft updates my OS every Tuesday.

lougord99

Well, no. They update the first Tuesday of the month.

You don't tell us how much experience you have with this horrid IT call www.southwest.com . If you have experience, then you can't possibly be making this comparison.

qwertyasdfghzxcvbn

Second Tuesday.

flg8rmatt

And for people that can't or don't want to use credit, you have other options. I have a prepaid AMEX card that I usually keep loaded for use online and for travel. It even comes with travel protections (though the protections are probably not nearly as good as a "regular" AMEX cardholder gets).

mritty

A "bug" is the fact that Southwest's website doesn't remember your login id even though you check "Remember Me".

Charging customers tens of thousands of dollars for a hundred dollar transaction, wiping out their bank accounts, causing all sorts of overdraft fees, late transaction fees, missed payment fees, etc - that goes well above "bug". That's as close to a software disaster as you can get. This is the equivalent of Microsoft not simply needing to update every 4 weeks, but instead Microsoft shipping a product that destroys every piece of hardware it comes in contact with.