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Comment by Simucal | Hacker News Reader

Can you really do this that easily? I remember one time trying to cancel a payment to a service which failed to provide what they promised and I was given to a resolution specialist. That specialist said they would refund me right away but then bank would do an investigation into the transaction. If it turned out my position wasn't defendable then they would re-apply the charge to my credit card.

It seems like a store saying that the purchase was made with a clearly stated return policy would be hard to argue against to your bank.

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I imagine it has something to do with the "level" of credit card you have. My card is fairly high end; nothing in the $500,000 per year solid gold card league, but definitely not in the "sign up for this card and get a free pizza" type either.

The customer service has been outstanding. I've never spent a minute on hold, and of the three disputes I've had (one identity theft, one double charge, one true merchant dispute) they've canceled the charge in seconds without question. I received a confirmation letter in the mail about a week later and that was the end of it each time. It's been a completely different experience than when I had a "free pizza" card.

That's how the chargeback process works with all Visa and MasterCard cards. The money is returned to you immediately, the chargeback notice is sent to the merchant, and they have 10 business days to respond. If they don't respond, or the banks decide in your favor after reading their response, you keep the money. Otherwise, the charge can be re-applied weeks after you initially got your money back.

Did you tell them you were going to move all your banking, mortgage, RRSP, line of credit and credit cards to another bank because of the poor customer service and failure to resolve the issue of the chargeback?

I've found that when you come in to your bank to close out all your accounts, especially with an ATM card/freshly filled out paperwork for another bank they usually ask if there is anyway they can keep your business. At such times they've been known to recall that the #1 policy is making money, and they don't make very much money when your accounts are at another institution.

It's good to move your accounts around every now and then someone's always got a free iPod or whatever.

The chargeback resolution policies are set by Visa and MasterCard, not by the bank. They do not have the option of forcing a chargeback where the store you shopped at did no wrong. Some bank manager could decide to give you their money in the form of a statement credit, I suppose...

Either way, switching banks regularly in order to steal electronics from stores doesn't sound like very ethical advice.

I think the author wanted the device his wife had, he reasonably assumed that a product with the exact same name would be the same product.

Now he can't return it to get the device he really wanted to buy and reasonably assumed he would be buying. I don't know whether it's ethical, perhaps a philosopher can weigh in on that, in the meantime I think the author wants his cash back and the device returned.

About the iPod I meant the offers the banks make when you open accounts and move a bill or two and deposit a couple hundred bucks for a month or two.

What are the ethics around the myriad of fees surrounding VISA/MasterCard? What's the ethics around cutting off wikileaks from funding? What are the ethics around selling cables at 800% markup using illogical arguments about digital cables being 'better'?

The world isn't an ethical place my friend.

> The world isn't an ethical place my friend.

99% of the time, people play by the rules and play fair by each other. If those things you listed were excuses for lying and cheating your way out of paying anything you wanted, there would be no modern society; it'd be chaos.

People that act as you described (who at any little upset, immediately turn to threatening the business with everything under the sun.. and in this case, are threatening a business that has nothing to do with the kiosk the purchase was made at) really grind my gears. Luckily, I've only encountered a few of the type out of tens of thousands of customers.

Maybe my method is not as good as yours but I always get the feeling that I'm not that important to them even though I think I would be a better customer than most. One bank mistreats me or does something stupid, I get the feeling that I can't do much about it and if I took my money elsewhere they wouldn't care and the new bank would treat me similarly.

How much do you think someone should have to actually have some leverage?

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