This is on behalf of a friend of mine, who may have waited to long to resolve a debit card issue.

Sometime in july, this friend bought a soda and cigarettes at a localy owned convenience store, the merchant keyed in a charge of 308.00 which my friend misread and signed. His bank has given him the runaround for months, and he basically got frusterated and gave up trying a couple months ago. I told him i'd try to help. There are a couple of things to mention. This $308 charge overdrew his account, which suffered multiple overdraft fees, his account is now frozen at minus 600+ dollars.

Shouldn't the merchant have discovered the discrep on their books by now?

what course of action do we have?

If your friend contacted his bank and they investigated the charge, they should have told him why they believed the charge was authorized. He placed a claim, we assume, for an unauthorized electronic funds transfer. The problem is, you say he signed the sales slip.

While he could contact the banks regulator and file a complaint, there may be a better way to go. As you mention, the business should have settled its books and had an overage. Their cash register shouldn't have balanced that day. The skeptical side of me says that if your friend spoke to someone at the business, how reputable are they and could someone have taken the cash so they did balance that day. It could have been a bad employee, or they could maintain they gave the cash to your friend. The business manager/owner should be contacted and if your friend wants to pursue this, the Better Business Bureau may be the next stop.

The longer this goes without being resolved the harder it will be to get that money back.