Insurance pay glitch gives customers pause

Published 6:39 pm Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Now you see it, now you don’t.

Now, you panic.

Brookhaven’s Cindy Moore was reviewing her finances Monday when a$20,102.27 charge was made to her checking account and her StateFarm Visa credit card was slapped with a $507 processing fee. Themassive attempted withdrawal was the result of an error betweenState Farm and Visa and is being cleared up, company officials, butthe false transaction definitely gave Moore a moment ofpause.

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“I was thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'” she said. “It’salready Monday, and I certainly didn’t need that.”

State Farm spokesman David Majors said the error affectedapproximately 12,000 customers who used their State Farm Bank Visacredit cards to make online payments from May 5 to May 7. Theattempted withdrawals are all around the $20,000 mark, while theprocessing fees hover around $500, he said.

Majors said the $500 processing fee has been reversed, and thecompany has cleared up about 80 percent of the withdrawal errors.The cause of the glitch is unknown, he said.

Any State Farm customers who experienced the error should call thecompany at 1-877-732-4368.

“We’re just reversing that charge so our customers will be back towhere they were. We’re going to make it right, that’s the bottomline,” Majors said.

Problems with Moore’s account have been corrected. She said hercredit card fee disappeared after midnight Tuesday morning and thecharge to her checking account was wiped away as well.

“No need to put a stop payment on it,” Moore said. “But they got itstraightened out, thank goodness.”

The State Farm glitch actually didn’t hurt Moore, other thanmomentarily, but she’s worried about the 20 percent of affectedcustomers who are still waiting to have their accountsrestored.

“They won’t be able to get gas, to buy groceries or do anything,”she said. “It didn’t inconvenience us, but I’m sure there are a lotof people that it did.”