Sprout
Sous Chef
I don't know how debit cards work in the US, but don't you have to enter your PIN every time they make a charge? You do in Canada. I would be concerned about how two payments were charged. In Canada it would mean that my card had been swiped, then I entered my PIN and then the whole procedure done again. Or, it would mean that someone had duplicated my card and stolen my PIN.
It was a payment made over the phone, not in person. Their offices don't take payments. You have to call their payment line or send a check, so they had all of my card information. In the US at least, they typically run debit cards in situations like these as a credit card. As long as they have a major credit card logo, it's possible, and very common. I pay bills over the phone and online all the time and I'm never asked for my pin. Just the card number, expiration date, billing zip code, and 3-digit security code on the back of the card. If you've ever paid a bill at a restaurant with your debit card to the server, and they didn't have a portable machine in hand that allowed you to enter your pin, the payment was processed as a credit card. The CC companies typically charge the business a few cents more for each transaction run as credit instead of debit, and it takes an extra day to post to your bank account, but it works pretty much the same, sans pin. That's why you have to sign a slip at a restaurant. You don't have to sign anything if you use your pin and it's run as a debit card.
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