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Junior Christopher Laferriere said he has seen a lot of his friends and roommates get overcharged when purchasing meals or beverages from Chartwells.

“I remember my roommate getting overcharged,” Laferriere said. “He looked [at the screen] and it subtracted $20 off his account, but he only got a sandwich.”

But Laferriere isn’t the only student to notice this.

Sophomore Mike Quinn said he has been charged for food that didn’t belong to him.

“I was charged at least $30 for a meal for two people one time,” Quinn said.

But not all students have experienced overcharging, at least to their knowledge.

Sophomore Alex Salalayko said that he doesn’t necessarily notice whether or not he is being overcharged.

“They [Chartwells workers] usually just ring it up, I tap my card and then I’m on my way,” Salalayko said.

Though some students are unsure on whether or not they have been overcharged, but several have heard of stories of their friends being overcharged, including sophomore Jamie Billman.

Billman overheard other students say that cashiers overcharge them for food, especially at Mondo’s in the Bobcat Den.Billman also mentioned incidents where her friend would get orange juice in a coffee cup and get overcharged.

“Coffee’s $5 and orange juice is $3 and he would tell the [cashiers] that he had orange juice instead of coffee, but they wouldn’t do anything about it,” Billman said.

Quinnipiac’s dining services provider, Chartwells, uses an a la carte system to purchase food, unlike the “swipe system” found at many universities. This is causing the price of each meal to be a topic of concern for students.

Some students believe that this form of payment system is creating issues in determining how much they are actually paying for each meal they order because they have noticed the cashiers don’t necessarily properly charge them for their meals or beverages.

Deric Waite, the manager of card services, gave insight to how the a la carte payment system works.

“The card is equipped with a magnetic stripe and an embedded contactless chip” Waite said. “When the card is used in conjunction with a reader, the reader passes the card number information to a server to validate the card.”

Waite goes on talking about what happens after the card validation.

“In the case of a monetary transaction, it will verify that there are sufficient funds in the account.  Those funds are then deducted from the account. If there are insufficient funds in the account, the transaction will be declined,” Waite said.

But when it comes to overcharging, Chand said there have been many instances where he has been charged incorrectly.

“I would get that [meal deals] and something else but then they ring everything individually and it comes out to $13 instead of being $8,” freshman Dylan Chand said.  

Chand, a member of the men’s Division I lacrosse team, said his teammates have already started running out of money on their meal plan.

“Six of my teammates already had their parents put money on their meal plan,” Chand said. “It’s not like it’s our fault; we just get hungry.”

The university should give students more money on their meal plans, according to Chand, especially since some students lose $400 off their meal plans just for living in a suite with a kitchen.

Chartwells declined to comment on this subject.