Overcharged on an EC card payment

Two days ago I bought some goods in Frankfurt and I used my EC Card to pay. The total cost was 115€. This morning when I was checking my bank statements I was shocked to see that 303€ had been taken from my account on that particular day. This was the only transaction that I carried out that day. The name of the withdrawer on the Lastschrift was the names of two individuals and not the company that I bought from. My question now is who do I approach to solve this problem? The bank or the company? Is it possible to have more more taken from your account than your receipt of purchase shows? Please I need help. I cant stand and watch 188€ just disappear like that.
Thanks.

What does your recepit say? If it shows 115 contact the bank, if it shows 303 contact the store.

You can ask your bank to reverse the withdrawal of the money. The other party will contact you, why you did that. There may be a charge for the reversion if it was done with a legitimate claim.

My receipt shows 115€. I will contact the bank then. My German is almost zero -could you perhaps write me a short transcript of what I should say?

Go to the bank and talk to someone in person.

Are you sure that the €303 wasn't for a different transaction? The transactions don't always appear on the statement the day they were made.

STB has raised an important point here: things you buy with your EC-card must not necessarily be debited from your account with the same date. Thus make sure that the amount was not owed to another purchase like 2-3 days before because if neither amount nor the recipient are in line with your bill, this might be just the case. Could be that you tokk 300 EUr from an ATM and 3 EUR are just the costs, for instance.

If you are sure that this can not be the case, here is what you tell or write to your bank:

HIERMIT WIDERSPRECHE ICH DER LASTSCHRIFTABBUCHUNG VOM ... (fill in date) ÜBER DEN BETRAG VON EUR ... (fill in amount) AUGFRUND MANGELNDEN ANSPRUCHS VON ... (fill in name of recipient as printed in your account statement). BITTE SCHREIBEN SIE DEN ABGEBUCHTEN BETRAG MEINEM KONTO ... (fill in your own account number here) UNVERZÜGLICH WIEDER GUT.

With this you make sure that the amount will be cancelled on the other side's account and credited back to your account. However, be aware that if it should turn out eventually that the withdrawel from your account was in order, you will be charged some hefty fees for that.

Cheerio

I'd even say that EC-card debits for in-store purchases hardly ever happen on the same day.

I wonder when the banks here will actually make use of this electronic magic and remove the money at the point of sale, not days or sometimes a week or more later?

right after NASA develops warp engine

The reason for this delay is with the dealers using the Lastschriftverfahren. They send bulk-messages at a chosen point of time to the debit-system. Some smaller dealers do this once a week. (as a friend of mine does).

And real-time booking would be quite difficult to achieve due to sheer mass of moneyorders sent by the banks every day. The use a batch process for this task to distribute the load of the networks and servers equally over a whole day.

If you are positive that you did not make any other purchases with them then the bank can handle it for you. You will just need to file a claim and they will usually have it resolved within 10 days.

I am also assuming that DE banks are similar to US banks in the way they handle things...of course I have been wrong before!

The lag time from which you make the transaction to when it actually shows on your statement is a bit of a pain. I used to run the Visa fraud dept. at a credit union back home, I'd have to toss out alot of reg-e claims when the paperwork came back with their signature and pic of them signing!

Some stores "batch" only a few times a week which means that it doesn't get transmitted to your bank until a few days later after you make the purchase. (One of the last posters hit the nail on the head in regards to how it works!) I doubt that there will be any changes in the near future!

How do other countries manage it, then? (I'm not being facetious, btw.)

@OP

As others have stated sometimes withdraws are delayed and processed days after you used your card.
Try to think if you mad a 303 Eur purchase in the last week. If you still can't remember, then goto your bank
and instead of requesting a payment reversal right off the bat, contest the charge and request a reciept and transfer details.
The bank will contact the withdrawer and request a copy of the sales receipt.

If the receipt the bank receives doesn't have you signature on it, or doesn't match any of the other transfer data,
or if they fail to send a receipt, then the bank will automatically reverse the payment for you.

Thanks for all the help and the responses. I went to my bank with a note in German that one of our forum members PM'd me. From the little that I could understand in the conversation between the bank and the company from which I made the purchases, there had probably been a mix up between my transaction and that of a previous customer. I still don't understand how the girl at the checkout was able to give me a receipt for €115 and still have €303 deducted from my account. I am just glad that the shop transferred back the €188 into my account

Thanks again.

Because most of the time, the amount to withdraw is manually typed into the EC machine.

True, but that EC machine should produce a receipt, and that receipt should have the real transaction sum on it. Unless, of course, he was given the wrong receipt, but even then it should have some identification means to show the card/account used.

Maybe they thought I wouldn't notice and that they could make a few extra bucks out of me. I don't know...

Anywho.. Its all sorted out... Time to move on.

Glad to have helped you out and that it all worked out for you

Now you can take your 188 euros and by us all a drink!

Glad it worked out!

Cheers!

Yes, thanks Mik for the note that you wrote for me

AshleyM, I'll be glad to take you out for drinks with some of my 188 oyro. PM me for specifics.