Is there a more dreaded phrase in the English language than:
“Would you mind swiping your credit card through again?”
I think most of us have been there before. As you slide your card with trembling hand, holding up a que of customers, your thoughts are leaping like a bronc out of the shoot: “Oh, no, have I made a mistake in my checking account?” or “But I just made a deposit!” and “This is mortifying!”
Ah, but then all is well the next moment. “It’s fine.” says the cashier. “We’ve been having a lot of problems with this machine, today.”
Whew!
It wasn’t so ‘whew!’ for my friend, Susan, who recently shared her tale to me. Her business requires frequent moves and she uses cards quite often as she finds it’s the easiest way to sort transactions for taxes and keep both her business and personal life, straight. So when her department store Visa was declined, she was both surprised and troubled. A call to the company was in order and she was curtly informed by the representative, “We cancelled your card immediately because our reviewers saw a charge of $56.50 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to a saloon!”
Saloon? Exactly what century are we in? And when did she get the hell out of Dodge?