The Irish Examiner newspaper carries this story in the Business section of its website today. A UK hardware chain is having to rebate customers following an ‘administrative error’ and what the Examiner describes as a ‘system failure’ over the weekend.

Customers who paid by credit or debit cards found themselves being charged multiple times for the transactions resulting in some of them being put overdrawn on their bank accounts. The chain in question is refunding the customers their money, but given the impact this could have had on customer with direct debit payments for utility bills or mortgages the impact to customers is potentially significant. Not quite a full-on trainwreck but one might say that some of the carriages were left behind at the last station.

This would appear to be case of duplicated data (or duplicated submission of data) indicating a weakness in the processes and controls for managing information, which has resulted in an information experience for customers that failed to meet their expectations.

 While customers are being rebated, spare a thought for the additional administrative costs incurred by the hardware store in tracking down the affected customers, calculating the amount of overcharge, contacting the customer, processing the refund, arguing with the customer about the impact on their credit rating because the direct debits for their phone bill, credit card and mortgage all failed because there was no money in the account (note – there is no information to suggest that this has actually happened, but it is a risk and would be a long phone call). These are the costs of scrap and rework in the information process. Payment by electronic card (credit card or debit card) is a ‘information age’ payment process and is fraught with the risks of non-quality of information fromf poorly managed processes.

Buying tools by debit card… so good they billed you twice, no.. three times… no wait that could be four times….