North Texas

$10,000 Mistake Takes More Than a Week to Get Fixed

A North Texas woman says she made a $10,000 mistake that has been tough to fix.

Rachel Brinkley puts faith and family first, so the single mom tries to give what she can to her church. It may be $50 here, $100 there.

"I make an effort to tithe because of my faith and because God tells me you tithe 10 percent.There were so many times that I couldn't do that at all," Brinkley said.

She donates online because of convenience and because she has an account set up with her church that allows her to pay by credit card.

About 10 days ago, Brinkley thought she had donated $100, but then she received an emailed receipt that said she'd actually donated $10,000.

"I was pretty panicked," said Brinkley, "I didn't feel like I had put in that many zeroes."

She tried to call her church, Compass Christian in Colleyville, but it was closed. Her second call was to the credit card company. That's when her real frustration began.

"I was confident when I called that that was the only call I was going to have to make and that it would end there," she said.

Brinkley said the credit card company told her they saw the charge and that it was pending, even though it was above the total limit on her credit card. She asked that the charge be canceled and she said they refused. "I asked what can we do, and they said, 'Nothing, go to the source,'" she said.

When Brinkley finally connected with the church, they agreed to put through a refund, which then had to be processed through Paypal. Brinkley says she's thankful, but doesn't understand why the credit card company couldn't just stop the pending transaction.

"If it was me and it was my mistake, I can own that but I called immediately. They should have helped me," Brinkley said.

She did the right thing by contacting her credit card company almost immediately. The company said it could not comment to NBC 5 directly on Brinkley's case but said it would check into it. We also checked with Paypal, which confirmed it was submitting a refund to Brinkley's card just as her church had asked.

Brinkley said she's thankful it was her church and not some other entity that might not have been so quick to reverse the charge.

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