Hotel has my money

orbitpluto

I recently stayed overnight at a hotel at a cost of £50, the amount was reasonable and they asked to take a swipe of my card, the next day I checked out with no problem. except when I now check my bank account, £200 pending transactions, they have taken a 'temporary authorisation' of £150 which due to the weekend will take 8 days to appear back in my account!

This has almost put me overdrawn and has left me without access to £150 of my money for over a week, are they allowed to do this without first informing you??

Mikeyorks

No. Almost certainly an error that they haven't 're-used' the protective swipe for the actual bill.

Ring them - they can neutralise it immediately - your Bank can't. If you leave it to the Bank software then - as you say- it will remain unavailable for up to 10 days.

BruceyBonus

A hotel authorised £50 from my parent's account without telling them too - which took them overdrawn in the available balance. No charges were charged as the money never actually left the account, but it meant they were without the money for a week.

benbranson

yes they are allowed to do this, I'm sure that you agreed to it in their T's & C's when you checked in, even if you didn't read them!!

Almost all hotels work in the same way, I've spent years staying in them and found this out years ago when one of them authorised £500 on my credit card leaving me with nothing on there.

As Bruceybonus says, as long as you didn't use anything more than the cost of the room then the extra money will never actually leave your account and the pre-authorisation will drop off after 3 or 4 days.

HTH

Mikeyorks

benbranson wrote: »

yes they are allowed to do this, I'm sure that you agreed to it in their T's & C's when you checked in, even if you didn't read them!!

No - they're not allowed to simply put a freeze on whatever funds they choose. They're allowed to swipe a protective amount to cover the reasonable likely cost of your stay on check in. A bit different.

Then .. when you checkout they should substitute the true cost in place of the protective cost. Or neutralise the latter and swipe the real cost.

Either way ... they're not permitted to leave pending values sitting over your account until your Bank / CC software decide to remove them some 10 days later.

leviathan

Mikeyorks wrote: »

Either way ... they're not permitted to leave pending values sitting over your account until your Bank / CC software decide to remove them some 10 days later.

According to whom, because every place I've ever stay in here and abroad does just that!