Hadn't seen this one posted here yet.

Texas Association of Realtors

Y2K glitch affects some TAR credit card purchases

TAR members who have made credit card purchases from TAR during the first week of January should check their credit card statements carefully. Due to a Y2K glitch with TAR's credit card processor, some members were charged more than once for their purchase. Members who find a discrepancy should contact Susan Chichester in TAR's accounting department at schichester@tar.org or 800/873-9155.

Note: TAR purchases are not the only purchases affected by this glitch. This problem occurred on a national level with a number of credit card processors. Therefore, members are advised to check all credit card statements for duplicate charges.

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 21, 2000

Answers

I suspect that this is the same problem as the one already reported, with software distributed by CyberCash, and that TAR uses this package. Many, many smaller merchants use the CyberCash software for transmitting credit card and some debit card transactions to the appropriate cc company and/or bank. The big companies tend to have their own proprietary systems. CyberCash is saying that only the businesses that had not installed the latest, most compliant release were having the problem. On the flip side, some reports suggest that CyberCash was, at best, unclear about what constituted their compliant release. In any case - what happened is that the code which indicates that a transaction has been submitted but not posted yet is the same as the value of the first day of the year 2000. So, the software keeps sending the charge upline because, according to its own information at the merchant's end, the charge has not yet been posted. The problem continues until that particular charge is somehow taken off the system and/or a successful upgrade is performed. I know of one person locally who is having this problem with one of his hardware suppliers. The big cc companies, VISA/MC for ex., are saying that they have edits to block duplicate transactions. But that doesn't seem to be bearing out in all cases either. As a matter of course, it would seem prudent to check the heck out of bills for the first couple of months of this year.

-- Celia M (celiaam@aol.com), January 21, 2000.