I was just doing my accounting and I noticed I had 3 double-charges on my Capital One credit card that all happened within a 2 day period. I found this to be very odd since I have never been double-charged on any of my credit cards since I started using them 10 years ago when I was 14.

So I went ahead and submitted 2 charge disputes with Capital One, and a third with the other company I saw double-charged. I then finished my accounting, and noticed that the balance showing up on my Capital One did not include those 3 charges. I validated my suspicions by calling up their customer relations department (getting a lady in India) and confirming that the charges only show up once in my account.

I then did my emails to rescind my previous queries into having the double-charges refunded, and also included in the email to Capital One that their web system (or possibly statement system) has an error and needs to be fixed. The double-charges actually weren’t showing up on the same statements. They showed up once (for May 16th and 17th) on my last month’s statement, and then again (May 17th and 19th) on my current month’s statement. Go Figure.

[Edit on 6/13/08] A few days ago, after an annoying downtime on the Capitol One credit card site, I noticed they added a new feature that now shows your latest charges within a certain period of days (15, 30, etc) instead of just the current billing cycle. So I’m pretty sure the above problem was due to them implementing this new system without warning the user or having any indication of the system change in the interface. I do know how annoying change control is, and the problems that come along with implementing new features on websites which may temporarily confuse users, but I’d expect better from a multinational corporation like this. Then again, this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened on their website, so I shouldn’t be surprised.