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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Au Bon Pain overcharged GWorld users $7,500

The overcharges that occurred at the Au Bon Pain in the Shops at 2000 Penn totaled $7,500, a University official said last week.

Some students, faculty and staff making purchases on GWorld cards were mistakenly charged up to twice the cost of their orders between January 2 and March 15, University spokeswoman Michelle Sherrard said earlier this month. Sherrard confirmed last week that the overages amounted to more than $7,000.

Senior Associate Vice President for Administration Ed Schonfeld said the University has no indication that similar mistakes have occurred at other restaurants.

“BbOne (which processes all merchant transactions for GWorld) and the merchants reconcile GWorld sales monthly. This practice identifies any discrepancies in sales,” Schonfeld said in an e-mail.

He added that it was this reconciliation process that helped identify the overcharging that occurred at Au Bon Pain.

Sherrard said Tuesday evening she did not know how many GWorld users were affected. Students were reimbursed April 2.

Both Sherrard and Schonfeld said the University believes the overcharging was unintentional.

Ed Frechette, senior vice president of marketing for Au Bon Pain, said earlier this month that the overcharging was the result of an interface issue with BbOne, the system provider for GWorld cards.

“The problem was that GWorld card swipes resulted in erroneous ‘transmission failed’ notices,” Frechette said. Cashiers at the franchise swiped the cards a second time after seeing this notice, only to later find “the first swipe did, in fact, go through, thus the duplicative charges,” he said.

Schonfeld said some students had filed University Police Department reports after the double charges.

“A small number of students filed reports with University Police regarding questionable charges on their GWorld cards at Au Bon Pain,” he said.

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