Pending Withdrawals

hardya

My disabled son has pending withdarawls on his account affecting his available balance. He does not recognise any of these pending transactions.

The bank says the way ALL general banking pending withdrawals work is that the debit card is (alegedly) used and the (on or offline) retailer gets an authorization code for the withdrawal. The retailer may then take that money using that code within the next 6 months, but the bank has no record of who the retailer is, only the code and the pending transaction amount. The bank continues to count this pending withdrawal against your available balance over this 6 month period until the money is taken.

My son has learning difficulties and it is hard to get to discuss this with the bank myself in detail. Two things seem rediculous to me.

1. That this period is 6 months
2. That the retailer cannot be identified.

Just one of these might enable us to sort this mess out.

Does any one have any experience of this or have any inside knowledge of this aspect of the banking system. I have searched for information on the web and cannot find any.

cifpower

That's the way it works I'm afraid. The bank will only know who took the money when the merchant claims it. It normally takes up to 5 days but can take 6 months or even longer in very rare occurrences. When the transcations show up and he doesn't recognise any of them, phone the bank and start a fraud investigation. If proved to be fraudulent the money will be returned.

YorkshireBoy

Suggest he keeps a hard copy record of his transactions, as I and many others did before today's 'paperless society' (I used to use the reverse of my monthly paper statement, and then reconciled when the next statement arrived).

If he lives with you(?) maybe you could make it a nightly thing with you reminding him to complete his spending record (who with, what on, and how much)?

System

Authorisations / earmarking of funds normally stay on an account for no more than a week. Debit card payments can normally be claimed up to 6 months later, but will normally not show as pending after a week, as they should be claimed by then.

Perhaps it be better for your son to get an ATM card only, then you both shouldn't need to worry about those pending card transactions.

hardya wrote: »

My disabled son has pending withdrawals on his account affecting his available balance. He does not recognise any of these pending transactions.

The bank says the way ALL general banking pending withdrawals work is that the debit card is (allegedly) used and the (on or offline) retailer gets an authorization code for the withdrawal. The retailer may then take that money using that code within the next 6 months, but the bank has no record of who the retailer is, only the code and the pending transaction amount. The bank continues to count this pending withdrawal against your available balance over this 6 month period until the money is taken.

My son has learning difficulties and it is hard to get to discuss this with the bank myself in detail. Two things seem ridiculous to me.

1. That this period is 6 months
2. That the retailer cannot be identified.

Just one of these might enable us to sort this mess out.

Does any one have any experience of this or have any inside knowledge of this aspect of the banking system. I have searched for information on the web and cannot find any.

hardya

Thanks for all the advice.

The bank now say that the period that the code is valid for is set by the retailer!!
BUT that they can often (though not always) identify the retailer. The barnch sais to my son they could never identify the retail but the telephone support managed to identify it as Paypal. It is thought that the pending transactions are a test that paypal make when the account is set up. My son made four attempts to set up a paypal account (only fourth one was successful) and for each paypal executed a pending transaction, which (according to the bank) should have remained on the account for 7 days.

However when these pending payments first occurred 1 week ago we phoned paypal and they indicated that no pending payments had been instigated. I can find no text on their site that indicates that they will do this.

Also the the payment did not fall off after 7 days and had to be canceled by the bank manually.

How can a retailer unbeknowns to the customer and to themselves instigate a pending transaction that impacts the customers available bank account balance and set a valid time period themselves of upto 6 months? This seems madness! And one cannot get easy access to these phantom transactions, one has to telephone and ask for information and each bank support staff give you a differemnt story as to how they work.

Does any one know of any hard banking code / legislation information that addresses this?

hippey

It's normally 10 days for auths to be deleted, it is a bit hit and miss regarding the identity of the retailer, most staff are guessing who it is and a lot will depend on the information provided by the retailer and business type code. Sometime you have a name, business type and country and no one has ever heard of them!

jonesMUFCforever

Do not want to sound harsh but is the son capable of using a debit card - would it be better just to have a cashpoint card?

jambosans

hardya wrote: »

However when these pending payments first occurred 1 week ago we phoned paypal and they indicated that no pending payments had been instigated. I can find no text on their site that indicates that they will do this.

From the Help Section on PayPal's website:-

PayPal wrote:

How much will I be charged to confirm my card?
When you begin the process of linking and confirming your credit or debit card, PayPal will charge a small amount to your card. For Maestro or Solo cards this will be two small random amounts, each less than £1. For all other card types, there will be a charge of £1 exactly.

Don’t worry, any charges will be refunded to you once the PayPal code is entered and your card is confirmed. This may take up to 24 hours to appear in your PayPal balance.

If you requested the PayPal code more than once, then you will find more than one charge on your card statement. The full amount of all the charges will be refunded once you have entered your PayPal code and confirmed your card.

Note: If we are unable to determine or we do not support the currency of your card, the card will be charged US $1.95.

See below for further details:-
https://www.paypal.com/helpscr?cmd=_help&locale=en_GB&countrycode=GB&_dyncharset=UTF-8&t=solutionTab&ps=solutionPanels&solutionId=163390

The timescale a bank holds an authorisation varies from bank to bank, but generally speaking (as others have suggested), it's normally around 7 working days. After this point the authorisation should "drop off", however the merchant can still claim on the original authorisation up to 6 months later (generally speaking).

Banks can see information on the authorisation and the merchant behind it. Again, depending on the bank, who can access this information varies from bank to bank - telephone banking, payments & clearing, or even fraud to name but a few.

Your bank will have a "policy" on dealing with pending transactions, most will not remove them on customer request. However, if the transaction is still pending beyond a certain point, the bank may oblige in removing providing you accept any future debit from the removed authorisation must be disputed with the merchant. Some banks will refuse point blank to remove the authorisation regardless, at which point I would gather all the information you can (including the authorisation code which your bank can provide), and contact PayPal. Speaking to customer services will probably be useless, so I would escalate a complaint.