Ouch... Debited

Here’s a peep into the pitfalls behind that swipe of your debit card

- Venkata Ravi

It was at 03.00 a.m. Standing in the small queue of about 5, at a hotel in Manchester, I got my first taste of things going wrong with debit cards. Flights towards India and from India are timed for midnight and later in India — the apparent reason being first world sleep is more precious than the third-world one. An elderly gentleman was trying to settle his bill with a much younger receptionist. The receptionist swiped, frowned, cleaned the card and swiped again and declared that the old man’s card was not working. He then suggested that the customer try the ATM immediately outside the hotel and pay with cash. The gentleman left and when he returned, he was no longer one. Next, I got a ring-side view of what happens when you rub a senior citizen suffering from loss of sleep, the exceedingly wrong way. He railed and raved, that there was no money in his bank account as per the ATM as it has already used to pay the hotel bill in question, which the receptionist was showing as due.