My $67 lunch

I went to lunch yesterday with my friend Andrea.  We went to this Coney Island place that I haven't been to in forever.  I had a ham and cheese omelet with some wheat toast.  My bill was $6.  I had $5 in cash that was mine, $20 in cash that was Dream Cruise money and then my debit card.  So I decided to use my debit card rather than embezzle the Dream Cruise money (I would pay it back!)  Andrea paid with her credit card and the lady was having a problem with the machine, so that should have been my first clue that I should have paid cash.  But I went ahead and paid with my debt card anyway.  This would be a good time to tell you that I had to have Andrea back to work by 1:30 and it was already 1:29.  They did have the little machine where you enter your PIN, so I paid my bill and walked out.  Then I looked at the receipt.  I was charged $67.40 for my lunch!  Ahhh!  I didn't even have that much money in my account.  I only had $40-something in it.  So I went back in and the lady that did it started freaking out because she didn't know how to fix it.  She had her co-worker come over and refund my money.  As she was doing this I asked her if they would pay my overdraft fee since I knew I didn't have enough money in my account.  She told me that it shouldn't go through because they haven't cashed out the machine yet.  She said that if there were any charges to bring it in and they would refund it to me.  But I had a feeling that I would be charged.  Isn't the point of entering the PIN that the money comes directly out of the account?  I then decided to pay with the Dream Cruise money rather than dealing with another transaction with my debit card.

Last night, I got home from work and checked my account - of course there was an overdraft fee.  Now luckily, because I have a credit union, it was only $5, but still, that almost doubles the cost of my lunch.  So now I am going to print out the statement and cross off the transactions that are not relevant and bring it into the Coney today to get my $5 back.

The moral of the story is: don't use your debit card at the Coney!