Vodacom double debit

[HavocXphere]

You can't seriously think their IT team is incapable of building a system that can't ensure protection over something simple like double debit in a financial period per account.

It has nothing to do with being incapable. Weird bugs make it through even the most rigorous code reviews - see Mars lander incident.

Besides - what other explanation do you propose if not a mistake/bug?

 

[prod]

Besides - what other explanation do you propose if not a mistake/bug?

Who knows, I'll keep my tinfoil hat on for now.

And it has everything to do with incapable. If they cannot provision for something like a double debit, which is one of the core features of a D.O. system in the first place, then they are very much incapable and my guess is there will be some very uncomfortable meetings next week...

 

[HavocXphere]

Who knows, I'll keep my tinfoil hat on for now.

And it has everything to do with incapable. If they cannot provision for something like a double debit, which is one of the core features of a D.O. system in the first place, then they are very much incapable and my guess is there will be some very uncomfortable meetings next week...

Thats a little like claiming BMW is incompetent at building cars when one of their cars crash. Sometimes scenarios occur that the designer didn't foresee.

There are just too many factors at play to jump to conclusions. Hell the whole thing might be outsourced to a 3rd party for all we know.

 

[marine1]

Lol, Vodacom have been running debit order systems for what, 12+ years? You can't seriously think their IT team is incapable of building a system that can't ensure protection over something simple like double debit in a financial period per account.

Yup

 

[prod]

Thats a little like claiming BMW is incompetent at building cars when one of their cars crash. Sometimes scenarios occur that the designer didn't foresee.

That's not even close in comparison.

Hell the whole thing might be outsourced to a 3rd party for all we know.

It's probably not, since 3rd parties would have very basic checks for this, as I've said before. The ones we've used for example would outright reject duplicate accounts in a same batch or with the same strike dates. Funny how it's never a case of "Dear Customer, due to a technical glitch we've missed your debit on the 1st"

 

[HavocXphere]

It's probably not, since 3rd parties would have very basic checks for this, as I've said before.

Of course they will have checks in place regardless of who designed the system. My point is that you can't cover everything - its impossible. There is always some fringe scenario or fluke that the "basic checks" didn't anticipate...and those fringe cases result in system malfunctions after "12+ years" of working perfectly as you pointed out.

 

[marine1]

Yeah funny how it never misses the debit orders. That always works flawlessly.

 

[j4ck455]

Vodacom will ensure that refunds and all associated banking charges are paid by close of business on Monday at the [highlight]earliest[/highlight].

At the earliest? Wow, other companies would be saying at the latest.

What I don't get is how glitches like this are even possible, not just Vodacom but any company that double debits: there is clearly no safeguard in place that uniquely identifies a specific instance of a debit order to determine if that specific debit has already been processed before processing another one for the exact same amount on the same day from the same account number at the same bank and branch code. A unique identifier could just be a hashsum of all that info that is then stored in a database as a primary key once a debit has been processed, a duplicate debit can simply be prevented by checking to see if that key already exists. This can be done either centrally or at the source or both.

 

[creeper]

I was thinking about the incident. I went back and saw two different ref numbers quite far apart. There are many reasons for duplications, including a bath run that stopped and rerun. It didn't remove the old data before restarting.

Regarding checks and balances. It should be simple. Amount. Account number. Cellphone number.

Lastly. Vodacom should provide a bit of goodwill for their mistake. Something
like a 1GB free for this month

 

[ginggs]

Care to elaborate on how this is relevant?

They used to have an "oops" around December / January and double dip debit orders, and then only refund the members that complained.

We know from the rep on this forum that Vodacom also only refunded BlackBerry users that complained when there was a BIS outage some time ago.

 

[Bernie]

It could have been a bankserv issue and nothing to do with Vodacom at all. No one here really knows or is saying. In any event I would have expected some kind of check (by whoever) to catch this kind of double debit.

 

[FlashSA]

Will there be compensation for people with bounced debit orders because of this? Not to mention debit orders aren't free.

Don't bother answering, we know the answer.

South African consumers are pussies.

I was once double debited by my insurance company. Because the separate bank account I use for debit orders only had enough to cover all debit orders, the double debit caused my vehicle lease debit order to bounce as that was the last one to come off the account that night.

I was furious with the insurance company and threatened to leave until they made things right. I hate the fact that I had a debit order bounce with Ford Credit because of this and through no fault of my own even though I quickly EFT'ed the payment to fix things.

I now leave an extra couple of K in that account in case someone drops the ball like that again.

 

[ShaunyCT]

Every company updates their software to fix bugs on a regular basis, however these software updates are not always perfect. I think maybe yes MAYBE that was the case with vodacom. Nobody but the Senior staff at Vodacom will know for sure.

People complain about debit orders bouncing because of this and then how the bank charges penalty fees on it.
Now normally people set these debit order dates on their salary date... my question is why do some people also feel the need to spend their funds before all the deductions go off and only leave funds for the debit orders???... What about the rest of the month??

Are you guys normally broke after debit orders???... maybe we should learn how to manage our finances so that when these debit order glitches happen, we are still safe from penalty fees.

 

[werfie]

maybe we should learn how to manage our finances so that when these debit order glitches happen, we are still safe from penalty fees.

BS. While I agree on people having to manage finances properly, we should not have to do this or do that. The only thing that has to happen is that companies (who make their revenues from our hard earned cash) shouldn't mess up. And when they do, act responsibly and deal with the repercussions of their mess.

Secondly, although I understand that errors occur and that one should be reasonable, what infuriates me to no end is the fact that when the company messes up, You get a sorry and are arrogantly told that you WILL wait until they can get it sorted while having no recourse.

However, when something goes wrong on your side with a payment for whatever reason, you get treated like a criminal, get threatened, have to pay penalties, get services suspended and are subjected to the torture of trying to sort anything out with a call centre. Then a sorry suddenly doesn't carry the same weight.

It's for this same sort of reasons that so few people have comprehension for the economic impact of MTN's gazillion rand fine but are rather licking their lips to see them burn!!

 

[KleinBoontjie]

At the earliest? Wow, other companies would be saying at the latest.

<snip>

If they do pay the people back on Monday, they're still going to be better than the companies that say "at the latest" and only pay back the money after a month. Monochoice comes to mind.....

 

[Blu82]

Something interesting to note is that if you had your debit set for the end of the month you were fine (like me) and if you had it set at the beginning of the month you might have been double debited (my wife).

 

[riscbroker]

Something interesting to note is that if you had your debit set for the end of the month you were fine (like me) and if you had it set at the beginning of the month you might have been double debited (my wife).

Not for all cases - my debit order is due on the last business day of the month and was double-dipped on the 31st.

 

[Antybubbs]

can i ask a stupid question.. but how does a company make interest on monies in our accounts? surely they would just take back the money they debited? Or is it safe to say i didn't do accounting for a reason?

 

[marine1]

can i ask a stupid question.. but how does a company make interest on monies in our accounts? surely they would just take back the money they debited? Or is it safe to say i didn't do accounting for a reason?

The money is not in your account, it has been taken by the company, they then sit on the millions of rands in their account for 5 days or more and dont refund the interest earned by them into your account

 

[HavocXphere]

can i ask a stupid question.. but how does a company make interest on monies in our accounts? surely they would just take back the money they debited? Or is it safe to say i didn't do accounting for a reason?

Money left your bank account and went into VC's account. It sits there for say 48 hours and gets 48 hours interest that is credited to VC's account. Then they transfer the part they owe you back while keeping the interest.

Thats the tinfoil hat theory - as I said before I doubt this is an evil plot. Not because I don't think VC would do something evil, but rather because I don't think it'll be a profitable evil plan.