Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

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You hand that info to the merchant because your credit card company can issue chargebacks against them and that costs them a pretty penny with their payment processor, especially if it happens often. Credit card disputes almost always slant in favor of the customer.

Folks just don't seem to realize: you make a reasonable effort with the vendor, and then go straight to your credit card company.

I caught a restaurant "helping" themselves to a very healthy tip for delivery; I'd tipped in cash. The owner repeatedly professed that he didn't know how to issue a refund and offered cash.

He was playing stupid because he didn't want to deal with the transaction fee, nor did he want a paper trail of his fraud; I strongly suspect he was doing this to other people, too. Warned him three times and three times he said, gosh, he had no idea how to issue a refund to my card.

I asked for just the fraudulent tip back and my credit card company reversed the entire charge. So not only did he lose the tip, he lost the cost of the food and he got dinged with a chargeback fee. He also lost my weekly pizza order.

I believe this doesn't work with debit cards, which are the norm in Europe.

Still though, it's a weird system. Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it, with some other party reimbursing me if that goes awry (and I notice).

Can't speak for all of Europe, but my bank in the Netherlands (Rabobank) certainly does offer chargeback options on debit card purchases.

  > Instead of giving someone just enough permissions to spend my money, I give them permissions to spend all of it

A peeve of mine is that the trust-until-a-screwup system is used in far more critical places than with a credit card. For instance, "DOT certification" of tires has no paper trail until people die.

If a tire fails while operating within its speed regime and before five years from manufacture, then it is to be reported to the DOT (US Department of Transportation). This usually only happens if the police are reporting on a fatal accident - most common citizens neither know that this option exists nor how to report it. If enough reports of a specific brand or type of tire come in, then the manufacturer (or importer) must provide proof of the testing done and pay some fines.

Many of the cheap Chinese tires are out of business (read: have changed business names) far before this critical last step could ever be reached, assuming that any reports were filed at all.

Disputes are enforced by Visa and Mastercard rules and apply to debit & credit cards equally. Some countries may have some extra legal protections for credit cards, but for clear examples of merchant bad faith the card network's dispute resolution process should be enough.

I also wouldn't call debit cards "the norm". They are in majority (1 to 5?), true, maybe also because many are issued for free by the bank where you have the account (which doesn't mean they are also used). But still not really "the norm".

Living in the US, with some of the worst banking infrastructure in the world, my debit card has an app that allows me to instantly lock/unlock the card, set spending limits, category limits, and even to deny a transaction if my phone isn't geolocated close to the transaction point.

I get a nearly instant alert, sometimes before the payment terminal has displayed "accepted", that there's been a charge on my card.

Also, at least in the US, debit cards have similar fraud rules to credit cards (ie you can chargeback) but the time period is much, much smaller. A week, I think.

I strongly urge you to not use your debit card and use a credit card wherever possible. Aside from better protection, any fraud or mistakes are not involving real money, but credit.

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