Apparent Apple Card snafu attributes AT&T charges to small Dallas accounting firm

AppleInsider

Some Apple Card users recently noticed a discrepancy on their rolling statements, with AT&T charges mistakenly attributed to Dallas tax accounting firm Waters, Hardy & Co.

Problems associated with the odd mixup began to crop up on Thursday, when a number of users saw aberrant transactions appear in their Wallet app, reports MacRumors.

Some Apple Card owners traced the error back to what seems to be a mislabeled AT&T charge. Instead of properly assigning certain charges to AT&T, Apple Card processing is for some reason ascribing those purchases to the tax firm. The mistake is expectedly causing confusion for card holders who keep close track of their spending.

Waters, Hardy & Co., which has received a deluge of calls from confused Apple Card customers, confirmed the problem in a statement posted to Facebook on Wednesday.

If you see a charge on your Apple credit card from "Waters, Hardy & Company CPA" please know this was not us and we did not receive the funds. Please check your At&t account as we were told by some it was in fact their bill with our name listed as the merchant. This afternoon we have received hundreds of calls from all over the United States regarding this matter, so much so we had to turn off our phones. We are working to get this resolved as soon as possible. Thank you!

What, exactly, is causing the issue is unclear. Apple has not commented on the matter and it is unknown when the problem will be resolved.

"This has been an incredible challenge for us. We are a 10 person office and are up against a 10/15/20 filing deadline for extended income tax returns. Our staff have been having to answer the phones instead of working on our clients' returns," Richard Waters told AppleInsider. "None of our clients are able to get through to us. It is so bad, we had to turn on the auto operator and leave a message to the callers explaining what has happened. We are trying to reach someone at Apple, AT&T or Goldman Sachs that can help us, but have had absolutely no success."

Support personnel have reportedly affirmed the error to one Apple Card user, who was told the company is aware of the issue. Beyond an inconvenience to users, however, the snafu does not appear to have any material effect on payment routing.

Updated with statement from Richard Waters.

chasm

Apple hasn't commented on the matter because this has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. This is a Goldman Sachs error.

Apple provided the prestige name and the software for card management, and publicity for special offers it would seem. GS handles the entire business end of this card.

mr lizard

chasm said:

Apple hasn't commented on the matter because this has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. This is a Goldman Sachs error.

Apple provided the prestige name and the software for card management, and publicity for special offers it would seem. GS handles the entire business end of this card.

When you partner with someone else and insist that your branding is the only one visible on the product, including the name of the product, and you’re even the public face of the product, then you assume the responsibility too. You can’t have just the good stuff from that arrangement and walk away from all the negative stuff.  

What’s not helpful here is Apple’s ingrained policy of not commenting on anything that goes wrong with any of their products or services until they’ve identified the root cause and have a fix for it. No holding statements, no “we’re looking into it”. It leaves people scrambling around trying to work out what’s going on, doing all the work on their own, and other firms like this tax office end up putting out statements of their own. 

All it needs is a call from Apple to Goldman to confirm that they’re looking into it, and a super short statement in the app and website that says “we’re aware that some customers may be seeing erroneous entries on their account. We’re looking into this and will provide another update shortly”. 

That’s it. In a pinch everyone calms down. 

MplsP

Not sure why this is even newsworthy. From what I can tell, there were no erroneous charges, there was just a computer glitch at GS that mislabeled some of them. 

macgui

chasm said:

Apple hasn't commented on the matter because this has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. This is a Goldman Sachs error.

Apple provided the prestige name and the software for card management, and publicity for special offers it would seem. GS handles the entire business end of this card.

While all of the above is true, it's also true that since all the cachét is Apple's, they need to offer a comment ASAP.

This is not the same thing as the random claim of "My iPhone killed my cat" or "iOS 14 borked my phone". There are probably more people holding the card because of Apple being the 'frontman' than if G-S had tried this on their own. So Apple doesn't bare any blame for the screwup, but they do have a responsibility to look into and advise us accordingly.