Debit Withdrawal without My Money on Hand

Last night, I was having trouble with my withdrawal from my Union Bank ATM. I went to a BDO ATM machine (I always have withdrawals there) to get money for our immediate needs. I should have paid house rentals plus the salary of our yaya. When I inserted my ATM on the machine, it read it, i did the usual process and input my pin and select the "withdrawal" transaction. I input the amount and then it went processing.. processing.. processing.. Very long time to process the transaction. After a minute or more, the screen read, "We did not receive any reply for this transaction" and my card got out. All I thought was the machine was offline or it could be Union Bank itself.

I transferred to another ATM machine which is Metro Bank , however again it was just processing and then again it could not be processed. Transaction was incomplete at the end. What made me concerned was when another Union Bank ATM holder complained that his money was debit when in fact transaction was incomplete. I was suddenly worried about mine. I called the Union Bank customer service right there and then. To my dismay, the PHP10,000 I withdrawn on that unsuccessful transaction was already debited from my balance. Oh my God! I needed that money badly as I was supposed to pay rentals last night. The customer service officer assured me that it will be credited back to my account but process takes 5-7 days to complete. 7 days? That long? They got my money for just a span of minutes then I'm getting it back for number of days. Hu hu hu. What a bad night!

However, things like that really happen. I spoke to my bank just this morning and she advised me that likely the connection failed in the middle of the transaction. She informed me that when one makes a transaction in another ATM machine, not of your bank's, the ATM center will send message to your bank and then your bank will reply if okay to proceed with such transaction. When it's withdrawal, it could possibly be that Union Bank has replied already and debit right away my money and then in the middle of that, there was a connection interruption that BDO system has not received the message which made it unable to receive the reply for that transaction. Since it was reported already, the bank will be resolving the problem in due time process.

My lesson from this experience is never to withdraw right away without checking the balance first so if there's a system problem , debit withdrawal without the money on hand will be avoided. I should also avoid withdrawing bigger amount in one transaction. That was my practice before, I need to take mental note of that. Hope my money be credited back soon. My budget is in trouble because of that.