I guess I got free drinks?

May 4, 2023 9:23 AM

I went out to a bar with a friend a week ago and used my card to buy us two rounds of drinks. No tab, no closing out, hand the card over, they run it, and I sign the receipt. The charges were in pending for quite a while and now entirely disappeared, so I guess we got free drinks? Would you contact the bar?
posted by rhymedirective to Work & Money (12 answers total)

Are you sure it didn't go through under another (corporate) name other than the bar name?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:35 AM on May 4, 2023

If it were a massive check I might say contact the bar as a courtesy, but for 2 rounds of drinks it's not worth it. Whoever you reach on the phone is likely to be as confused as you are.
posted by mekily at 9:37 AM on May 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Are you sure it didn't go through under another (corporate) name other than the bar name?

Nope. I keep a zero-dollar budget and wrote down the exact dollar amounts of the two transactions and nothing shows up either under a partial search by bar name or dollar amount or date.
posted by rhymedirective at 9:50 AM on May 4, 2023

I'd probably contact your card because that's weird and I'd want to make sure there isn't a problem with the card.
posted by coffeecat at 9:54 AM on May 4, 2023

I wouldn't bother. 2 rounds is not going to matter, and if they even care enough to try to figure it out they'll likely spend more in labor doing the forensic accounting than they made on the drinks in the first place. Consider it a karmic gift, or your just due for some time you got screwed over. Whatever helps you sleep at night :)
posted by COD at 10:07 AM on May 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Last time I worked on the software for a Credit Card system, it was authorizations are tracked separately from transactions. The former are used to avoid over-extending credit, but it's all settled at night. Authorizations that match a transaction are dropped, so your credit isn't decreased by both. Auths that don't match to a transaction are held for a period of time because it's possible the merchant didn't deposit 100% of their transactions that night, but eventually old authorizations will age off and your credit will go back up. Aggregate transaction amounts are multiplied by the "Merchant Discount" and deposited to the merchant's account. So it sounds like (???) some employee mistake or a POS (Point of Sale) glitch, but as others have said, probably not worth the merchant or bank's time. You could donate it to charity 🤷‍♀️.
posted by forthright at 10:21 AM on May 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Pending charges always disappear after about a week -- that doesn't mean the charge isn't waiting to go through on your account. Basically what happens is the card gets swiped, the bank says "yeah, that charge will go through", which is the pending transaction -- but that's not the actual transaction, the charge hasn't actually gone through, it's sitting inside the cash register's software, waiting for someone to go "yes, let's officially run these charges through because I balanced my drawer and corrected any mistakes". It could be that somebody forgot to "close out" the credit card transactions on the bar's end for that day, but someone will eventually catch it and run those charges through. An expired auth doesn't mean the charge won't go through eventually, I wouldn't count on the charges being lost, they'll show up eventually.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:11 AM on May 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

I hear you.

I had a rental car for about 6 weeks, and it got damaged. Returned it, did the insurance thing, and then basically nothing. Has been a month at least, and still no invoice for damages from the rental car company. So weird. Don't really want to remind them of it, but...

Maybe drop the bill amount into their tip jar? Or get a beer there and tip that amount?
posted by Windopaene at 12:30 PM on May 4, 2023

Sometimes the charge will re-appear after the good bookkeeper comes back from on holiday, or when the auditors came in at the company's year end.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:20 PM on May 4, 2023

Billing is an odd animal. I had shoulder surgery back in January 2022. The charges were quickly adjudicated through my insurance in February, so I expected to see a bill shortly thereafter. Nope. I didn’t see the bill until March of this year. More than a year after the surgery.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, the drink charges will probably show up eventually.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:21 PM on May 4, 2023

I went out for dinner with friends in February and paid with my debit card and it took the bill two full weeks to clear my bank. I had never seen it take that long but I’d be inclined to give it more time.
posted by bendy at 2:30 AM on May 5, 2023

Long time bar tending person here: forget about it. Free Drinks!
posted by james33 at 7:15 AM on May 5, 2023