Halifax & Tesco

savagej

Yep, I must have it mixed up with something else.

I still dont agree it warrants any customer being charged, it certainly runs against the spirit of the Visa and Mastercard schemes.

jennifernil

I am very confused!

1. What happened on 24th October? (we were on holiday in France then)

2. If the OP spent it then surely they spent it? Why would they not expect to have to pay for it, whether sooner or later?

Mikeyorks

savagej wrote: »

and why authorisations drop off before a transaction has been presented or the authorisation cancelled by the merchant.

It's a pragmatic timeframe - based on the fact 99% of debits clear through before the reservation is removed by the Bank software. There has to be a cut off point .... and it's set by most Banks around the 7 working day mark. In that way it only catches 1% of legitimate transactions ... but removes 'phantom' transactions, such as those often generated by the hotel industry, without the drawer having to resort to violence to get their reserved funds removed!

The debit will still clear if there are funds available ... but it's no longer 'guaranteed' at that point (cue for argument from some people who work in Banks and think [erroneously ] otherwise).

savagej

Cheers Mike.

I was pretty certain there was a way of returning these after the authorisation drops off. I am glad to hear I am not the only one who thinks they can be.

As it was pointed out under reason code 74 they can be after 30 days if the account is closed and I am sure the bank is not slow to get its money back if that is the case. It would appear here they are happy to pay them and to collect any charges incurred, hence making even more money.

I put my original post on the shopping & grocery forum and someone has posted a reply from Tesco's CEO's office which was a "brush off", not even an offer to pay the charges. Have not looked for any other posts there yet.

Roughly how many transactions must have gone missing during this small time frame, I am sure there are very many and someone is laughing up their sleves.

As you seem to also be aware the acceptance and chargeback rules are complicated and there is the contract with the bank acting as the card processor to take in to account.

Summing it up, I dont think customers should be suffering due to Tesco's servers failing to initiate a batch run and it sitting around until someone finds it (probably by accident, in my personal experience this is most likely) then starts it off. They must have know this had happened and could have put up a warning on their website to let customers know and offer to refund charges, they do make a lot of money every day.

sammylou100

Hi, I also started a post about this issue, which is in the praise, vent etc section of the site. I called Tesco to complain and got a very lengthy call from someone in their head office, who was on the phone for 10 mins explaining exactly how this happened, it all boiled down to the following pointers from Tesco - A) I should check my bank account more thoroughly They have 180 days in which they can take their money C) They have checked with their legal team and they are well within their rights to take their money and not liable for any charges.

When I asked whether they were willing to make a goodwill gesture as I had incurred a £30 charge the week before Christmas they said no. This all happened because I misplaced a spending of £4 nearly three months ago, yeah I'm sure people will tell me I should be more scrupulous and it's my fault because I should have seen it had not been taken, whatever. It's irritating but there is basically nothing Tesco will do and I'm now gonna have to swallow the charges.