Help card declined - but money was taken

leese2504

Evening,

Hope someone can help, today I went food shopping and using my Visa Electron card tried to pay for my goods, the card declined, knowing I had enough funds I asked the gentleman to try again, it declined for a second time, at this point looking very red and feeling embarrassed I left the store with no FOOD! I nipped to the cash machine and printed out a mini statement, to my horror there was £124.90 debit pending, this is my food shopping bill x 2. I dashed home and phoned the bank to be told that the transactions had been authorised and I would need to take it up with the supermarket. So off I trotted petrol light on red and a 11 month old baby back to the supermarket, the manager assured me the payments had not been authorised and to take it back up with the bank. So I come home and wait in a 50 minute queue for someone to answer at the bank, finally they snotty man on the other end basically said it isn't our error and tough but admitted that VISA had contacted them this morning to advise systems would be down til 3PM. I now have £5.00 in my bank account, no food and no petrol for work, who can I complain to???? I am so appalled by the way I have been treated! :mad:

skylight

I had this at tesco a couple of weeks back.

Due to their machine not completing the transaction, they deducted £9.11 five times, the fifth being the actual one completed transaction. My bank though showed all five as being deducted from my account as the payments had authorised at Tesco tills via the bank, so the bank deduct the monies whilst waiting for Tesco to process the payments through the banking system. After 3 days when Tesco did not complete the other "false" transactions, and my bank released the funds back to me. Was my last £50 too.

It was flippin annoying but I was told by Natwest that there is nothing they can do to clear these "false" authorisations out of my account and that I just had to wait for the system to release them when they are not claimed for.

leese2504

skylight wrote: »

I had this at tesco a couple of weeks back.

Due to their machine not completing the transaction, they deducted £9.11 five times, the fifth being the actual one completed transaction. My bank though showed all five as being deducted from my account as the payments had authorised at Tesco tills via the bank, so the bank deduct the monies whilst waiting for Tesco to process the payments through the banking system. After 3 days when Tesco did not complete the other "false" transactions, and my bank released the funds back to me. Was my last £50 too.

It was flippin annoying but I was told by Natwest that there is nothing they can do to clear these "false" authorisations out of my account and that I just had to wait for the system to release them when they are not claimed for.

Thanks so much for replying, you have put my mind at rest, why they couldn't tell me that is beyond me. Its so annoying isnt it? To be left with no money through no fault of my own is disgusting! They should of have something in place to prevent this from happening. I will manage without the money for a few days, but I imagine there is people out there that cant ! x

moneymaker2

Hiya.

Tesco can call their authorisation centre and ask them to reverse the transaction.

I think that they need a certain level of authority to do it, however I used to work for a credit card company so I know that they can do this.

Hope that helps.

Laura

cashless_wonder

I work in a shop, sometimes declined transcations appear to have been taken from accounts and into our tills. . . They go into a holding account somewhere between whatever firm do the payment processing for the store & the bank it has been taken from.

They whilst there probably earn someone a tidy sum in interest and just wait for someone to claim them. It takes one phone call, we keep the phone # behind the till just in case, to confirm that has indeed happened and our payment folks are good enough to try & speed up the process of reuniting the money with it's rightful owner, sometimes cutting 3 days or so off the whole process.

It is disgusting customer service from the store in question to deal with it as they have . . . I can't offer any other advice than you will get your money back . . .

Ames

It happened to me once, I bought petrol and they put in £70 instead of £7, and told me that it hadn't gone through. But the money went out and when I went back to see the shop they said there was nothing they could do. It reappeared a few days later.

DevonGirl

:mad:This has happened to me too. It's bad enough when you're flush with money, but when you're DMP-ing and every penny counts, it's really a nightmare. Hopefully you had some emergency funds to dig into? (My emergency fund is totally cleared out due to boiler breaking down - feels like I'm living on a knife edge!)
Hope things get better Leese;)
DG