By Joan Hershberger
It was the worst of all times to have a glitch in the credit card intake process — Saturday of MusicFest.
On Saturday, Laredo Grill’s electronic connection with the credit card companies began charging some customers four times for the exact same amount.
For owner-manager Gabino Olivarez the whole thing has been a nightmare.
“It is just a nightmare. We have been working on this since two yesterday. This has never happened before.”
He did not know exactly how many credit cards were overcharged — “It is several, several credit cards.”
He did not know of any other area business that had the same fluke in their system.
With the blackout Monday, he was afraid it might happen again. It hasn’t.
“It was only on Saturday, the night of the festival … you have no idea how much people,” he said. “Right now, we are waiting for the report on the credit card company to confirm we have fixed it. And then double-check it. We cannot miss anybody, especially here in town. Everybody is suspicious and worried. Some don’t understand. Some are a little bit upset. We assure them we are fixing it.”
Even his regular customers have teased him about the quadruple charge as they allowed him time to fix the problem.
Olivarez said this should not have happened. The computer is programmed to tell the owner if the same card has been run twice. To have the exact same charge noted four times defies the built-in safeguard.
“I am not the computer guy. I am pushing the people who are to give me information and to mainly get the money back to the people.”
As of Thursday afternoon Olivarez said he felt that the problems have mostly been resolved. Mostly he wanted to re-assure people that the problem had been caught and is being fixed.