LAPEER, Mich. — A Michigan woman from Lapeer County was charged 18 times for a $119 purchase from Meijer on Sunday, totaling over $2,000 on her credit card.
The extra charges happened due to an error with Meijer's credit and debit card readers, causing customers to be charged additionally once or twice, or in Kaila Gormley's case, 17 times.
Gormley said she made a pickup order at the Lapeer Meijer after attending a graduation party on Sunday.
She said that after picking up the groceries and returning home, she got an email notification that her credit card had been maxed out.
"I'm like, okay, that's not normal. So then I got a hold of Meijer. And they're like, yeah, we've been having an issue all day. And so I called my credit card company. And they said they couldn't do anything for me, because the funds were being held by Meijer. So, then I went to work yesterday, and I got charged again like eight more times," said Gormley.
Gormley said she continued to see additional charges show up on her credit card the day after she made her initial purchase at the store.
After contacting her bank and Meijer, she said she learned that the payments would be pending for several days before anything could be resolved. She added that she did not receive any specific timeline as to when she would have the money refunded on her card.
"I called Sunday, and they said, 'if they get posted, give us three to five days, and we'll dispute the charges.' But I'm like, 'can't you just reverse them?' And they said, 'No,'" Gormley said.
Initially, Gormley didn't realize that she had been charged so much and didn't know why her card was maxed out.
"I did panic at first. So, I made an additional payment, but those payments won't go through because they're being held up," Gormley added.
Gormley says she is grateful that she used a credit card so the charges are easier to reverse and added that she won't be making any pickup orders from the store in the future.
Meijer issued a public apology on their Facebook page for any customers who were affected by the transaction errors.
13 ON YOUR SIDE reach out to Meijer, who provided this statement:
During the weekend we had sporadic issues with credit/debit purchases at some of our stores, which caused delays in processing time and in some cases more than one charge for the same amount. Our understanding is numerous retailers were affected. In most cases the financial institutions will quickly cancel out the duplicate charges. If any customer has an issue they should alert their financial institution, which should be able to quickly take care of the problem.
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