Small amounts of money missing after ordering groceries online

po72

Hi all,

I wonder if any of you could help me solve this mystery because both Tesco and Lloyds TSB blame each other and i'm sick of it.

About a year ago I began doing my grocery shopping online at Tesco and being short of cash I always keep a close eye on whats coming and going out of my account and have no money to play with.

Anyway, one night I checked my balance online and it was £61.11 account balance, £61.11 available balance. I did my Tesco shopping and it came in nicely at £59. Over the next few days as usual I made a couple of adjustments to my basket as things occurred to me and it ended up at £60.50. The day before delivery was due I checked my bank online again to see my account balance was still £61.11 but my available balance was £57.11. I couldn't work out what had happened but realised I now couldn't afford the shopping so went back and adjusted my basket, taking a few items out to get it down to £57. I checked my account balance immediately after saving the changes and to my dismay found my available balance was now £56.11 - again I couldn't afford the shopping!!! So....i went back onto Tesco and took even more items out getting it down to £54 - checked back on Lloyds to discover an available balance of £55.11. I could not believe I had 'spent' £6 on absolutely nothing and had less shopping than I needed. I wondered when I would get the money back - keeping an eye on it over the next few days it appeared back in my account as account balance around 6 working days later.

After this incident I kept an eye on this for months and sure enough every week exactly £1 is 'borrowed' from my available balance immediately after placing an order for around 5-7 working days. Every time you amend the basket a further £1 exactly is taken.

A few months ago i had a meeting with Lloyds bank about something totally different and casually mentioned this little mystery to the lady. She was really intrigued by this and went and got some other employees to see if they could explain it. They all thought it was really weird and said it must be Tesco doing it I should give them a ring. So, I went back home and rang Tesco and they absolutely assured me it must be the bank. I have no idea who is to blame here and why they do it but for people like me and my partner £6 taken for over a week was a big deal.

Well, obviously there's ways around it being too troublesome - make sure you're sure on the basket before you check out so you only lose £1!

BUT, here's whats got me really annoyed - tonight i've noticed they've started borrowing £2 exactly for the pleasure of ordering or amending a basket!!!!! I did my shopping earlier but stupidly forgot an important item - I amended the basket, checked my bank to find my available balance is down £4 - I can't afford the shopping AAARRRRGGG!!!! :mad: Once again £6 borrowed for over a week which has caught me out big time. I haven't shopped online for around 3 months so I don't know when the change actually happened.

Here's the thing, doesn't 5-7 working days sound suspiciously bank related, and also the recent increase to £2 seems more to do with finding sneaky little ways to make money in the economic crisis than just by chance....??

I'd really love an explanation finally if anyone's got one and I also wonder if this is unique to Tesco?

jenniewb

I don't have the answer I'm afraid, and I think either a letter of complaint or similar to the parties involved may be your only option- unless you know someone "inside" the financial system. You could try posting on the shop-but-don't-drop boards? see if that throws up anything.

daily_2

Ask Lloyds to remove the earmark.

"When you use your Lloyds TSB Visa debit card,
some retailers will ‘earmark’ the amount of the
transaction. This means that the amount of the
transaction is reserved until the money leaves
your account. So you won’t be able to use the
money for anything else, even though it’s still
shown in your account."

zzzLazyDaisy

I don't shop on-line at Tesco, so I don't know if this would work, but it just a suggestion.

Could you remove your bank details from your Tesco account entirely.

Then do your shop, play around with your basket, and only when you are ready to check out, enter your bank details?

If you don't save your bank details on the site, they won't have the information to enable them to do this.

wigglebeena

Is it in the terms and conditions anywhere, like a service charge?

pelirocco

I am always changing my basket so next time i will check this ........you have prompted me to check whether tescos refunded me for a missed elivery that happened back in June , and no they havent even tho i phoned them up at the time

KimYeovil

If you're buying anything (and especially not if it's something like a shopping basket with lots of individual items) you should not be working with a buffer of one or two pounds in the first place. Be sensible and keep a sane balance in your working accounts.

boodika

KimYeovil wrote: »

If you're buying anything (and especially not if it's something like a shopping basket with lots of individual items) you should not be working with a buffer of one or two pounds in the first place. Be sensible and keep a sane balance in your working accounts.

Not being funny, but some of us don't have the option of having a 'sane' bank balance to work with. I know that my balance is near empty after all the bills etc have come out and therefore shopping online is restricted to what's left in my account.

This dissapearing money happened to me sevberal time but with Asda, and they took the whole amount of my shopping out of my account as a reserve AND took the actual amount out so I was minus £75.00 for 3 days until Asda decided to take the reserve off! :mad:

FOXGLOVE_2

boodika wrote: »

Not being funny, but some of us don't have the option of having a 'sane' bank balance to work with. I know that my balance is near empty after all the bills etc have come out and therefore shopping online is restricted to what's left in my account.

This dissapearing money happened to me sevberal time but with Asda, and they took the whole amount of my shopping out of my account as a reserve AND took the actual amount out so I was minus £75.00 for 3 days until Asda decided to take the reserve off! :mad:

This happened to me with asda recently as well, I was livid as the last £60 in my account was reserved so I had to go days without money.

I phoned their customer services for online shopping and they told me to write an email. Wrote an email and they told me to phone customer services :mad:

I emailed them again reminding them that I was still skint and got no reply, even sent a cheeky email asking if their delivery drivers could give me a lift to work as I couldn't take any money out for bus fare lol

I was hoping for some kind of apology or even an explanation so that I can avoid it happening again, money off vouchers would be nice but I won't hold my breath. But so far, no response so until ASDA decide to be human, they're not getting a sniff of my money.