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Which is more likely: 1) Brighthouse has a problem with cards that decline a $100 charge, but won't decline two $50 charges. 2) Brighthouse has a problem with

Which is more likely: 1) Brighthouse has a problem with cards that decline a $100 charge, but won't decline two $50 charges. 2) Brighthouse has a problem with customers that have a $100 bill but less than $100 available on their credit/debit card. I think the answer is the second. There's no reason for the first to occur. If a bank's fraud filter mistakenly identified a regular monthly bill as suspicious and blocked the charge, it'd probably block the followup charges from the same company too. Then, the goal would be to collect as much of the owed money as is available on the card, not to split a payment into chunks. If the 100% charge wasn't declined, they wouldn't have attempted the 50% charge. If the 50% charge wasn't declined, they wouldn't have attempted the 40% charge. There's no possibility for multiple charges going through and creating extra overdraft fees if they do it that way. That said, I've never seen this practice before.

davismwfl 11y ago
Yep see your point and agree totally on which problem they face most often likely. I did talk to customer service to get an explanation of the statement since it just looked weird. When I talked to him he did say that if the first smaller charge (50%) goes through, the system automatically tries one more charge on the same day for a lessor amount too. He stated very matter of fact it is to try and collect as much as possible of the total due. He didn't say what that amount would be though. I guess I am somewhat conflicted because I don't necessarily see this practice as all bad, but it does seem to have the potential to cause a problem for the very people that are most at risk to having an overdraft charge. After thinking about it I think you are right and it would not cause much of a problem for a traditional credit card, but for a visa debit card is where I could see the greater risk. I was curious too because how we setup our monthly billing for clients is if we get a denied charge we send the client an email and let them know we will retry the charge in 3 days. This gives them time to update their payment info if necessary or fix the issue before we retry. That seems more standard to me with an autopay type solution.

davismwfl 11y ago

Yep see your point and agree totally on which problem they face most often likely. I did talk to customer service to get an explanation of the statement since it just looked weird. When I talked to him he did say that if the first smaller charge (50%) goes through, the system automatically tries one more charge on the same day for a lessor amount too. He stated very matter of fact it is to try and collect as much as possible of the total due. He didn't say what that amount would be though. I guess I am somewhat conflicted because I don't necessarily see this practice as all bad, but it does seem to have the potential to cause a problem for the very people that are most at risk to having an overdraft charge. After thinking about it I think you are right and it would not cause much of a problem for a traditional credit card, but for a visa debit card is where I could see the greater risk. I was curious too because how we setup our monthly billing for clients is if we get a denied charge we send the client an email and let them know we will retry the charge in 3 days. This gives them time to update their payment info if necessary or fix the issue before we retry. That seems more standard to me with an autopay type solution.