Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Automated Debit: "There's nothing we can do to stop it." A Georgetown, TX man who had arranged for his water bill to be automatically debited from his bank account alertly noticed that his monthly bill was for over $21,000. (If he hadn't noticed, the debit would have happened, causing him to bounce multiple checks before the error was corrected.) When he told the city of the problem, "They said there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop the automated debit, and it was out of their hands." Their solution was to send a city employee with a check for $21,000 to reimburse their customer! http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/tuesday/metro_state_1.html Risks? Lack of sanity checking on a new billing system springs to mind. Lack of any way to correct errors is also quite prominent. Carl Fink, Manager, Dueling Modems Computer Forum http://dm.net/ carlf@dm.net [Carl Fink via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 87] 0:00 # G!