CAUTION...Marks & Spencers travel money

mattsuff

I thought I was good with money until I found this website very recently! I have found some superb information on here to help me save money and even to make some here and there, thanks to Martin and his team but also to the many number of regular contributors.

I would of liked my first post too of been positive ie to give everybody a great deal that I have spotted but unfortunately I have a very negative tale of events that started this afternoon.

I visited the marks & spencers travel money website today which I have never used before to purchase £800 of East caribbean dollars, unfortunately my transaction was declined and I was advised to contact my card issuer. So I telephoned my Debit card company(Barclays) to find out why it had been declined, they informed me that the transaction was actually authorised and the money had left my account.

So I telephoned marks & sparks to find what was going on. The advisor informed me that the transaction had definately been declined so

a: I would not be receiving any dollars

b: m&s will not receive my payment

He then went on to advice to go back to Barclays to find out exactly what was going on.

To cut a long story slightly shorter after going backwards and forwards between the two companies a manager at m&s told me that although barclays had authorised the payment, for some reason the bank that m&s use for this part of there business(HSBC) declined the payment and they will be returning the payment to barclays. The manager at m&s was unable/unwilling to investigate why that although my own bank had authorised the payment HSBC had effectively declined my payment and there fore turning down my business.

The thing that annoys me the most about this is that it could now take between 10-20 days before I get this £800 credited back to my bank account
which could of put my holiday in real jeopardy had I not have any savings.
So needless to say I will never be using m&s service again, even though I entered all my credit information correctly ie credit number, name, expiry date and security code and my card issuer authorised the payment m&s/HSBC refused my payment and will also take 10-20 days to credit my account!!

Thankfully I hope this sort of occurence is quite rare, I have done hundreds of transactions over the internet before and this is the first time I have had any trouble. I hope for the sake of everyone else that this is a one off error by m&s/HSBC but please be warned!

I think it would be interesting to know if this sort of thing has happened to anyone else.

P.S I hope I have posted this message in the right thread!

littlereddevil

This happened to me with travelex online and it was nearly 2 weeks before I got my money refunded to my bank account.

bbruce

Get your own back by getting an M&S credit card as these transactions are treated as purchases and surely they won't decline it!

hollydays

Marks and spencer customer service is usually very good.What about ringing your local store,asking to make an appointment with the Manager,he/I know itshe will be anxious not to lose a customer,and may be able to offer you something by way of compensation.i know its a different section of the company,but the Manager is a very good way to get things done,face to face.