Asda & pending charges ...

reality_bites

I've no doubt that other people have had the following experiece. I just wanted to know if they managed to do anything about it.

This week I made the mistake of ordering from Asda Grocery Online Shopping.

I took delivery of my order on Wednesday 7th. Having checked my bank account that morning I could see there was a £42 pending payment to Asda.

However, when my order was delivered an item was out of stock and therefore I had only been charged £37.

They had the audacity to take the payment of £37 from my account (cleared today) and leave the £42 pending. I phoned the patronising (and completely ineffectual), customer services team and was told it could take 7-10 days for that pending payment to fall back into my account. Which means they have their payment but I don't have access to £42 of my bank funds for approximately 7-10 days.

My finances are finely balanced. I can't afford the luxury of over £40 suddenly being unavailable to me for 10 minutes never mind 10 days. I will never shop with them again. From now on I'll be giving my business to Tesco, Sainsbury's or Morrisons.

The bank gave me instructions to pass on to Asda which would detail how to remove the pending charge immediately. It means Asda would have to send a fax to my bank stating they don't want the pending payment of £42. I doubt Asda will follow through with this though. They were adamant they couldn't do anything about it and that I'd have to just patiently wait over a week for the funds to drift back to my account.

How do they get away with this? I'm fuming. Which is probably fairly obvious.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

gordikin

Morrisons home delivery? Let me know how you get along with that.

reality_bites

I stand corrected, Morrison's don't do home delivery.

Great to know my options are just that little bit more limited.