Credit Question 2111



  • Hello,
    I’m a customer service manager for a company under SOX jurisdiction…
    We have a situation where one of our customers (Cust #1) paid for her friends (Cust #2) monthly subsription on her credit card for the first month…the friend(Cust #2) calls in to change the card number before the 2nd month, our customer service rep does not process the new card info correctly and the 2nd and 3rd month are charged to (cust #1) card.
    My back end processing unit is telling me that we cannot correct our mistake and credit Customer #1 for the 2 months and recharge those orders to Customer #2’s newly provided card number, as it is a SOX violation.
    Is that true?



  • This sounds like a processing error that needs to be corrected. The question is: Are there internal control policies / procedures to fix errors of this kind? E.g. management approval required, with detailed documentation of what happened, etc.
    Not sure how it would be a ‘SOX violation’ to fix an error. If anything, the proposed correction may be a violation to the company policy – if the policy is such that errors are not to be fixed that way. But then, back to my original question: What is the predetermined procedure to deal with processing errors?



  • Hi - While I’m more of an IT person, to me the credit card adjustments should ‘wash out’ in a manner that would result in a net effect of zero dollars. These post-adjustments on transactions shouldn’t impact income, asset valuations, etc., although with a few months of time passing it does entail a rather complicated adjustment. Secondly, credit card companies may charge something for making the adjustments - as they sometime get you both coming and going 😉
    Sometimes, SOX compliancy can be used as an excuse to prohibit certain actions, the company may want to gain control over or not deviate from standard operating procedures.
    A couple of ideas:

    1. You might ask ‘why’ this violates SOX standards specifically
    2. I’m not certain how large the monies are and based on your post it seems you want to provide good customer service. Maybe rather than performing complicated post-adjustments of credit card information you can make up this difference in another way with Customer #1 (esp. if the amounts are small in nature)


  • Sometimes, SOX compliancy can be used as an excuse to prohibit certain actions, the company may want to gain control over or not deviate from standard operating procedures.
    I am starting to this this dept throws out ‘SOX violation’ every time they don’t want to do something…
    Each order is over USD100, so to me making it right with both customers by crediting back the 1st and recharging the 2nd makes common sense…especially since they are both repeat customers…
    Thanks for the responses, I will push back and ask them ‘why’ and see what the reaction is…


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