Shoppers raise complaints after being charged twice for Walmart purchases

A Saskatchewan shopper is out more than $200 after being charged twice for her grocery purchase at a Regina Walmart.

Stacie Miskiman paid with her debit card at a self-checkout. She initially received an approved message, but when she removed her card, the machine said the transaction was cancelled. She inserted her card and paid again.

Two days later, when checking her bank statement, she noticed her account was charged twice for the same amount, totalling almost $450.

“I assumed it would be easy to get the money back,” she said.

Miskiman shared her receipt and bank statement with CTV News. The documents confirm the transactions.

She called Walmart first and said she was told the transaction only went through once, and the issue was likely with her bank.

When she called TD Bank, they told her the issue was with Walmart and it could take 30 business days to resolve it.

This happened in September.

“At this point now, it's been well over three months that I've been without my money,” she said.

“I can't imagine being a minimum wage earner where that was maybe my weeks’ worth of groceries that I now can't purchase.”

Miskiman estimates she’s made 30 calls between Walmart and TD Bank in an effort to get reimbursed. Sometimes, she’s waited on hold for 90 minutes.

“It’s my money. It shouldn’t be this hard,” Miskiman said.

“Nobody seems to know what's going on or how I can possibly get my money back,” she said.

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is responsible for protecting the rights and interests of consumers of financial products and services.

According to the group, consumers are not responsible for losses in unauthorized credit and debit transactions due to situations beyond their control, including technical problems.

But it is the customer’s responsibility to notify the card issuer without delay.

“When these errors actually happen, the onus is now on the consumer to try to rectify this,” said Gautam Srivastava, a computer science professor specializing in data security at the University of Brandon.

But the charging error often stems from the retailer, he said, when a point-of-sale machine does not finalize the transaction.

“It could happen to any retailer,” Srivastava said.

CTV News reached out to Walmart Canada for comment. A spokesperson said they are looking into Miskiman’s complaint, but did not comment on the broader issue.

In an emailed statement to CTV News, a TD Bank spokesperson said, “We're committed to supporting our customers and encourage any impacted TD Credit or Debit cardholders to submit a transaction dispute request through EasyWeb or the TD app, or by calling our EasyLine team at 1-866-222-3456.”

People are sharing similar experiences on Facebook.

Kaley Crosson posted that her debit card was declined unexpectedly at a Walmart in Brandon last month. When she double checked her bank account, she found two separate charges totalling more than $500.

“Thinking it was a mistake, we went back to Walmart to resolve the issue. To our disbelief, they refused to refund us, stating it was an issue with our bank,” she said in the post.

Another Facebook user commented on the post saying the same thing happened to her.

“I was so upset. I was charged double. They told me the same thing, and I contacted RBC and sure enough, the transactions went through to Walmart,” Rachel Brass said.

Srivastava encourages customers to notify their bank immediately if they find a duplicate transaction. There should be enough information with the transaction ID to rectify the problem.

He believes we could see more erroneous charges as retailers increase reliance on cashless self-checkouts.

Paying in cash will always be safer, he said. If that’s not an option, consumers should consider paying with credit instead of debit.

“There's more fraud detection in place. There are more steps in place for credit cards to try to detect and rectify situations like this,” he said.

Retailers lack a standardized policy for reimbursing duplicate transactions, according to Srivastava.

“Make a stink, raise issues around this because $15 to one person is not $15 to another person. It's the process that needs to be rectified. And it's only when enough voters take issue with it that things can actually change,” he said.