University of Tampa students discovered a series of unexpected UT Dining and Stadium charges over winter break that left many puzzled and others angry.
A glitch in the UT Dining Services computer system was discovered in early January that kept some transactions made with credit or debit cards from being processed. When the glitch was discovered by C Board, UT Dining’s computer company, all unclaimed transactions were finally processed. Meaning purchases made with a credit or debit card from September to December that hadn’t been processed were all charged on one day, January 3, after the glitch was discovered and rectified. This left some UT students with hundreds of dollars charged to their bank accounts at one period and others facing overdraft fees from their banks.
Commuter Trevor Hyssong was one of the students who discovered these charges to his account after hearing his friends had been charged.
“I found out about it from one of my fraternity brothers on Facebook while we were on break,” Hyssong said. “I looked at my own bank statement online and there was about 10 charges at different times totaling around $150.”
“My initial reaction was I was upset and it was frustrating,” Hyssong added, who thought he had been charged twice for earlier purchases. “There was a lot of confusion with no real answers.”
Michael Duffy found out about the charges after his account was overdrawn, resulting in a $200 overdraft fee.
“I was extremely frustrated with the university for not processing the transactions when they initially took place,” Duffy said. “I don’t think that’s fair to any of the students.”
Duffy’s charges amounted to approximately $40, which emptied his bank account.
“By taking out $40, UT overdrew my account, resulting in a fee of $200 and another fee that I believe was also associated with the overdraw, which was roughly $80,” Duffy continued. “Neither of these fees have been resolved yet, and I feel the university has an obligation to provide certain students with compensation.”
Neither Hyssong nor Duffy contacted UT Dining Services, but Sharon Lerum, the unit controller and human resources manager of UT Dining, received many calls from students who noticed the charges from January 3.
“I handled all the calls,” Lerum said, who made sure to return every single call and answer any and all questions and concerns students had regarding the charges.
Many students who contacted Lerum were concerned that their cards had been stolen or that they had been charged twice.
“If they, for some reason thought that it could be a duplicate charge, I investigated it. I looked into their transactions, got with them and made sure they were happy about it,” Lerum said. “[Students] verified it was their transactions and it just never got processed when it should have been.”
Some students who had overdraft fees resulting from the charges requested a letter that Lerum could send to their banks in order to refund those fees.
“I did give them a letter that they took to the bank and I had several phone calls from the banks, calling me to verify if the story was true and I just confirmed it and then they were fine with it,” Lerum said. “I had no students come back and say, ‘Oh, they have a problem refunding the money’ or anything like that.”
The glitch has been fixed and C Board has a new system in place for UT Dining Services to avoid the problem in the future.
“They now have a report printing in the morning that tells us if, for some reason, the batches don’t go through to the processors, that we have a way to call them and say, ‘Hey, the batches last night didn’t go through. Can you fix this right now?’ and then they can go fix that,” Lerum said. “In the past, we didn’t have that.”
Hyssong called UT Dining Services but never got an answer.
“To my knowledge, as far as a PR issue, they’ve never said anything,” Hyssong said. “I feel like [for] something like that, we deserve an email to students.”
Hyssong and Duffy will not be using their credit or debit cards at UT Dining now that this has occurred.
“I don’t plan on spending any money here and if I did it would be cash and less that five dollars because I don’t trust their system,” Hyssong said.