Minor glitch, all better now...

I mentioned, in rather cursory fashion, Devika's and my less-than-stellar server from last week. Turns out he wreaked more havoc than I thought. He charged my card for my half of the meal and the total bill as well. In all likelihood he made the error, then voided the charge, but no matter, because it caused about 35 dollars of my money to be held in abeyance for a couple of days. I called (both the bank and the restaurant) on Sunday when I noted the error, and I was told by the bank that they could do nothing until Tuesday morning (of course they had already assessed me a 35.00 fee in anticipation of the overdraft the errant charge was going to cause) by which time the charge would either have been posted or removed.

The manager at the restaurant was slightly more helpful. First of all she was appropriately, but not cloyingly, apologetic. Then she researched the error and called me back with details. She let me know that from her end it seemed that the incorrect charge had been voided, and that it should clear by Tuesday (on this point California Pizza Kitchen and my bank agreed).

In any case, I looked at my bank statement first thing this morning (it's direct deposit pay day) and saw that only the correct charge had posted, but that my bank had not removed the Non Sufficient Funds Fee. So I called them. And the rep grudgingly refunded the money after explaining to me that this was not a bank error, but a vendor error (I'll refund it this time, she said).

I tried to explain to her (calmly and rationally) that that being the case, she could still see that the errant charge had not posted to my account, so the 35.00 fee I'd been assessed needed to be removed. It never got ugly (I am committed to staying rational on the phone with business people; you catch more flies with honey. Also, it's just immature and counterproductive to alienate the person who may be able to help you.), but I also don't think we saw eye to eye on why the ball was squarely in the bank's court. Either way, I got what I needed from them.

The point is this: If I ever have that server again, I'm going to pay in cash.