Debit card been declined yet bank say money was taken

Dontknowanymore

Hi
I'm postin about a problem that I have had for the last few weeks now.
1st time, I had a phonecall from ASDA to say my online shop payment had been declined, I knew I had the money in there as I checked it the day before, phoned my bank and they said that a debit card payment for the exact amount was showing as pending on my account, which meant the funds were not available to me.
ASDA said they haven't authorised a payment, I had to transfer money over from my ISA to cover the payment.
about 10 days later the pending card payment 'dropped off' the account and the funds were showing.

The same thing happend when I ordered from perfect pizza online last week, I'm still waiting for that to 'drop off' my account.

Then today I went to ASDA, I checked my balance at the cashpoint and it showed I had about £13 as an available balance, went into the shop, bought goods totalling £8 odd, put me card in, it came up as declined, I knew I had the funds available so went outside and checked, it was showing I had £5 odd available.

I phoned the bank who said the same thing as last time, transaction for the exact amount at the exact time was pending on my account, but as there are no authorisation codes there is sod all I can do other than wait.

Does anyone know what the hell is going on here and who is at fault? the bank say it's the shops, the shops say it's the bank.
Thank god I have a little bit of savings is all I can say.

EDIT: I am with the co-op bank and it's a VISA electon (although they reckon it's a VISA debit, it's not!)

Dontknowanymore

Anyone????????

zppp

What you need to do is get the authorisation code from the bank and ask the retailer to tell their merchant to cancel the transaction, giving them this code. It is not the bank doing anything wrong, they have to hold those funds until the retailer claims the funds/notifys them of an error/cancelled authorisation.

Dontknowanymore

zppp wrote: »

What you need to do is get the authorisation code from the bank and ask the retailer to tell their merchant to cancel the transaction, giving them this code. It is not the bank doing anything wrong, they have to hold those funds until the retailer claims the funds/notifys them of an error/cancelled authorisation.

There is no authorisation code.
I just spoke to the bank again and thet said they keep having these problems with ASDA, noone seems to be able to give a straight definitive answer.

Mikeyorks

The fault appears to lie with Asda or the merchant who processes their cards. If you 'search' you will find a number of other threads and Asda figures in most.
But - it's normally their online shopping that screws it up - it shouldn't happen at a till (unless you're a bit trigger happy at pulling the card out prematurely;)).

immoral_angeluk

Change bank?

questionabout

I had a similar problem years ago but on a major scale. :mad:

I needed to book my family's holiday tickets to New York with my Visa Debit card after they had given me the cash. This was 7 days before they were due to fly. I did some Flight Comparisons and found Opodo to be the cheapest so booked them for just over £1300.

However I got an error message saying the tickets were not available online. But when I checked my available balance they had reserved the £1300 leaving just a few quid in my account. Opodo claimed they had no record of the transaction yet my Bank (smile) was insistant that they had held the funds and was nothing they can do! :eek:

I waited (biting my nails) every day for 5 days for this "Hold" to fall off the system. The morning before they were due to fly thank god my balance was correctly updated again and I managed to book the tickets at a similar price.

I do think this is a problem and the bank should be able to cancel holds after 24 hours. The merchant should just fully charge the customer and then do a refund if they need to in the future. Simples.

I've since left Smile bank, but my biggest lesson I learnt was NEVER USE OPODO.co.uk FOR LAST MINUTE BOOKINGS :mad:

Dontknowanymore

Mikeyorks wrote: »

The fault appears to lie with Asda or the merchant who processes their cards. If you 'search' you will find a number of other threads and Asda figures in most.
But - it's normally their online shopping that screws it up - it shouldn't happen at a till (unless you're a bit trigger happy at pulling the card out prematurely;)).

Nope didn't pull the card out too early, from the replys on my fb status asda were having probs wsith their chip an pin all over yesterday.

immoral_angeluk wrote: »

Change bank?

Why would I do that ?????????
I didnt ask that anyway.....

Mikeyorks

Dontknowanymore wrote: »

Nope didn't pull the card out too early

It wasn't a serious suggestion - hence the smile. But, at a till, that is one of the main causes of these 'phantom' or 'stranded' transactions.

Dontknowanymore

Mikeyorks wrote: »

It wasn't a serious suggestion - hence the smile. But, at a till, that is one of the main causes of these 'phantom' or 'stranded' transactions.

Oh right sorry lol
I'm the one who always forgets to take the blooming thing out :rotfl: