Please leave gifts of staplers and really BIG paperclips at the shrine they build me.

eris esoteric · #1 03-18-2006, 09:39 AM

I am an auditing GODDESS. I just want to point this out. The other day they had a problem with a credit card not going through. The desk clerks called tech support. Tech support didn't have a clue on how to fix it. So, naturally, they left it for me.

When attempting to charge the credit card, the PMS said there was a "currency" error. However, when the guest checked in, the PMS was able to call out for an authorization on it. I played around a bit. I manually input the credit card number into the program that sends transactions to the bank. The program accepted it. Ergo: probably not a currency error, even though the card holder was from Australia.

Then I played around in the PMS for a bit. Tried tricking the PMS into charging the card. Mostly got the (discounted) currency error. Finally got another error, one that stated that the profile name was in error. Not the guest's profile, mind you, the CREDIT CARD'S. Which smacked it all together for me.

A couple months ago, Mastercard bought out Diner's Card (yes, some people still use them.) Because of this, the comptroller had gone into the field for the diner's card description, and changed it to "Diner's Card is part of Mastercard." (This was mostly intended as a friendly reminder for the night auditors, because we're the only ones this influences at ALL.) We have not had anyone pay with a Diner's Card since this happened.

So, I called tech support. Got someone I didn't recognize (neither one of the two idiots, nor the most wonderful tech support guy EVA.) Told him to go into the description and change it to read just "Diner's Card". Had to do a little talking to get him to believe me, but we both agreed it couldn't possible hurt anything. He did it, I ran the card, it processed.

I think I scared him. He asked me "How did you know that would work?" I told him it was the most logical reason for it not working. He told me it was even in HIS manual, that this problem might cause that particular error message.

But what I wanna know is, how can these people stand to have me leave the hotel at all? It must be pure torment for them not to be graced with my presence. Poor, poor things...