Travel firm server glitch double dips on billing
Easy-breaks easily broken
Posted in Management, 30th March 2009 07:02 GMT
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A web-based travel agent scrambled to refund customers on Friday after a server problem meant customers' credit cards were billed again for holidays taken as long as a year ago.
Short breaks specialist Easy-breaks.com told worried callers it had rebooted a server, which had triggered its billing system to deduct payements again.
Staff at Easybreaks said they were working to refund the money as soon as possible.
They were unable to provide details of when the work would be complete or how many customers had been hit by the double charges. Boss Jeremy Legg was not available for comment.
Thanks to the Reg reader who tipped us off. ®
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COMMENTS
Sounds very illegal also
Isn't it illegal to keep the CCV of the card on file? If that company was following legal and/or common sense procedures that would never have happened.
As for the trouble to the customers near their credit limit, well I believe that most can claim that this transaction was not authorized by themselves and thus avoid any subsequent problems.
on reboot they do what...?
echo "processClientCards.sh >> /etc/rc.local"
does this mean if they reboot again, customers will be charged 3 times?
Storing of cc data?
So im guessing this shop is storing the cc data to process them from years ago?
Isnt this risky on its own.
And is this not a breach of various data protection acts?
Doesn't add up
If I inadvertently reload an old BACS dataset and reprocess it, I'm pretty sure it will be rejected for failing all sorts of checks, including dates and serial numbers. Are we to understand that there are no such controls for credit card payments?
Glitch, my ass.
"Boss Jeremy Legg was not available for comment."
I'm not surprised. "Business men" are never available for comment.
The question remains ... will interest be paid to people illegally billed? Or will the people illegally billed pay the interest into Jeremy Legg's bank account? Will anyone check? Does anyone care? Why does this kind of thing continue?[1]
[1] That's rhetorical ...
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