New AppleGate? Customers furious after Apple Pay double charges them
Bank of America and Apple are both apologizing to customers after a glitch left users of the computer company’s new mobile payment system being charged double by the financial giant.
Several iPhones users reported this week that they were charged multiple times by Bank of America for purchases they made using the new Apple Pay system that is supposed to withdrawn funds from a linked account — once — for each transaction.
CNN’s Samuel Burke reported this week that he was charged double when he used Apple Pay to make purchases at two different vendors on Monday. Soon after his report aired, Reddit users who have their Bank of America accounts linked to the new payment platform started to say they experienced the same thing.
Burke said his complaints were originally shrugged off by both BofA and Apple, but before long he was able to get representatives from both companies on the phone and, soon enough, a refund from the bank. Since then, Bank of America has said its refunding duplicate charges that, according to Burke, the bank was blaming on Apple.
“Bank of America transferred me to Apple Pay customer support,” Burke wrote. “The only problem: Apple’s representative reminded me that for security’s sake — as promised — Apple keeps no records of names or amounts for any of the transactions. That meant there’s nothing Apple could do, the representative told me. So Apple told me to call Bank of America. It was every consumer’s worst nightmare: customer service for two companies telling you to call the other.”
"We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to correct the issue. All customers have been made whole," Tara Burke, a spokeswoman for Bank of America, said in a statement offered to the Huffington Post for an article published on Wednesday. "We are always here for our customers and resolve any issues they have."
"We're aware of a Bank of America issue impacting a very small number of Apple Pay users,” responded a representative for the Cupertino, California computer company. “They're working on a fix that will be available shortly and reversing any duplicate transactions."
The iPhone’s new Apple Pay feature became available on Monday this week for devices running the company’s latest operating system, iOS 8.1. According to BofA’s Burke, "only about 1000 transactions” were affected by the error.
According to Bloomberg, Trudy Miller, a spokesperson for Apple, said the new payment system “is off to an amazing start” less than a week after launching. Through Apple Pay, some cards issued through JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Visa, Mastercard and American Express can be used to make purchase with a tap of the phone’s screen. Apple sold more than 10 million new iPhone 6 units in the first weekend after their latest model was unveiled last month.
