Safer System for online spending discussion area

Hi all,

As someone whose credit card details were obtained and used on the internet fraudulently, I got a Cahoot card and must say that on the whole they work well.

The only problem I had was that sometimes a retailer would not send the goods and when making an enquiry (why don't they ever inform you that something is wrong? after all they have your phone numbers and email address!!), I would find that the card had been refused by Cahoot for some reason, this often involved cancelling the original order and re-ordering over the phone using my ordinary credit card. One retailer told me this was quite common for the Cahoot card.

I now only use the Cahoot when I am purchasing online from a supplier I do not know the reputaion of (which is not often), the last time I used it was March 2004 so things may have improved now on the acceptance front.

I realise this isn't the right thread - but couldn't find one more adjacent to the problem?

Fortunately I keep a fairly close watch on my Credit Card transactions via an online link (Halifax). And had for some time been puzzled by discrepancies between the 'amount owed' + 'the balance available' being at odds with my 'credit limit'?

I could always calculate this to one, at most a combination of two, transactions but could not fathom out why. Sometimes the discrepancy resolved after a couple of days - but one large purchase of £1200 created an anomaly for 10 days. Fortunately the headroom to my credit limit was still adequate to cause no problems (I fully clear the card monthly).

But I recently (I use the card for all Internet purchases) had occasion to spend several £thousand on a single transaction. And rang the Halifax, in advance, to query an imbalance of several £hundred relating to a transaction from the week prior. And it was explained there was an outstanding authorisation which would clear in a couple of days. I remained puzzled as this appeared some weird sort of 'post event authorisation' (I knew the recipient {via PayPal} of the credit had the money several days prior) I was unaware of. But the discrepancy did clear in the promised couple of days.

I duly completed a several £thousand transaction a couple of days later - and saw my 'balance available' reduce by that amount within minutes, as the transaction was authorised. BUT - as the value 'in process' hit my credit card 2 days later and increased the 'amount owed' - there was a further deduction of the same value from the 'balance available' - resulting in a negative credit of close to £3k - despite I was still several thosand under my credit limit !! (Easy example - you have a credit limit of £10k on a clean card and spend £6k on a single spend. Your 'amount available to spend' will reduce to £4k immediately, as the transaction is authorised and the £6k is 'locked off'. As the transaction hits your card a couple of days later the 'amount owed' goes to £6k - as it should- but, critically, 'the balance available' has a further £6k deducted and reduces to MINUS £2k.

Net result - any further transactions are rejected, with potential threat to your credit rating.

Explanation - when the real transaction appears - having earlier been 'authorised' - it should automatically be matched with the 'locked off' value and the arithmetic should overall net back to where it had been a couple of days earlier. But the automatic matching relies not only on value (understandable) - but also on the date of the final 'voucher' being precisely that of the earlier authorisation. In my case (and clearly on many earlier occasions) - it was a day out. Resulting, at best, in not having full access to my credit limit or - at worst - having other transactions rejected despite being under the impression I had several £thousand headroom on my card.

Clearly the above scenario creates an exception condition (not the negative credit - suspect it is a value above authorisation level but which fails to match as it comes through) which the Halifax has to resolve manually? Hence the variable times these anomalies exist for - depending on how busy they are?

Due apologies have been received from the Halifax that this is an 'anomaly' - but no indication it will be / can be fixed. I've just moved house hence the values on my card - but I now watch my my Credit Card data even more keenly than before.

But - I strongly suspect the problem is not specific to Halifax? Fortunately I spotted and had this corrected within 24hrs. But, perverse as ever, my one 'recurring' annual credit card debt hit on that day! And I felt embarrassed having to apologise!

I have applied for the cahoot card but it is three weeks now and they keep rejecting my identy documents. Saying they are out of date or not acceptable.

Most of my dealings are over the internet so I do not get bills through the post and bills printed off the internet are not acceptable.

I only get one water bill a year but they say it is out of date even though it shows all of my monthly payments as is my rates bill. Tax documents are archived with my accountant and not easy to get.

I think these banks need to have people with some inteligence who can make a decision. One of the documents rejected was actually a Certificate of Residence from the Inland Revenue provided for proving just that!

I will probably end up telling them to "stuff their account where the sun don't shine"

So if you are like me and travel a lot so have deliberately set up your life on the internet you will soon find you are an unacceptable person or branded as a possible money launderer.

Any ideas Martin how we can get these institutions to introduce flexibility and common sense. Great site always my first port of call.

SteveR

The only problems I have had with the Cahoot webcard have been :

With John Lewis flower delivery service. For some reason their process is to take an authorisation against a credit card for the amount of the order, but when they actually process the transaction instead of using the authorisation code, they just process it again. However as the authorisation had used up the credit limit, there was nothing left when they put through the 'real' transaction. As they did this with two separate orders I presume that it is their system and was not a mistake.

With refunds after the webcard has expired, when you have to give the retailer the 'real' card number and try to explain the concept of a webcard...