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I pay some bills/credit cards via website or over-the-phone payment systems. These systems give you a confirmation number/reference number.
Is there a point to recording these confirmation numbers?
I know that in theory if there is a problem with the payment, you can cite the reference number, but does that actually work? Does it provide you any help to identify the transaction? Is a company going to believe your confirmation number if they can't find it using an internal search?
These numbers are way for the company to identify the transaction.
It's never a bad idea to store them. If you do have to speak with someone again it's often pretty convenient to just give them this number, it allows the company rep to pull up the information fairly quickly.
Most of my confirmation numbers are emailed to me so I just hit archive instead of delete.
I would also like to add if you do lose the number, don't worry it's not the end of the world because most companies have another way of identifying you, it just might take a little longer.
Edit:
Does it provide you any help to identify the transaction?
It might, for instance if I pay Chase and they email me a confirmation(which they do) I can search my email using "chase" or even auto-filter these emails into a label(gmail)/folder(if not gmail). You can in a way do this with the confirmation number, it would be more difficult since you would have to write these down and then search that number.
Is a company going to believe your confirmation number if they can't find it using an internal search?
They wont tell you your a lair, but no your confirmation number won't assist them in finding your transaction. They will probably try to find it some other way instead.
Once the charge appears on your statement, IMHO you can safely forget about the number.
No, they won't believe you if they can't find it in the internal search, but it will help to have it to help them find it - its the internal transaction identifier. Once the charge appeared on the statement - the burden of proof shifts to them, and if they claim that you haven't paid - they'll have to prove that the charge is for something else.
I have worked in a couple of places that hand out payment confirmation numbers, and let me tell you something, payment confirmation numbers are useless, if you have a problem with your payment we just use the date of your payment and the amount.
No one ever has requested me to look for a payment with a payment confirmation number, NEVER, in eight years.
So just use your common sense and don´t ask for one.
