Delayed Maestro transaction

zacspeed_2

Appologies if this is in the wrong section, but i'm fuming at the moment!
I checked my HSBC current account on-line yesterday & there was a Maestro transaction dated the 16th Feb 2005. The recipient of the payment was Legoland Windsor. I visited Legoland Windsor LAST OCTOBER!!!!!
This transaction has put my account into the red, & I will now be facing a £30 "card misuse" penalty because of this.
Surely a 4 month gap between me paying for goods then the transaction completion is unnacceptable? How ever am I supposed to keep track of my account if this is so?
I called HSBC & they told me thet Legoland were at fault (obviously), as they had only just put the transaction through!
Any hints or suggestions you guys can give me to get back at these fools would be greatly appreciated.

davidcampbell

its harsh but HSBC are correct

you told legoland they could take money from your account. now, on the 16th feb they have collected what you told them they could have and you didnt have the money there.

you should have kept enough money in there to cover it until it was collected.

harsh ..... but fair

if you havent had any charges before i would suggest HSBC could reverse it as a goodwill gesture, but they arent in the wrong.

sorry :mad:

DC

Walletwatch

It is rather unfortunate, but as David says, the bank is correct. I myself have had this on a couple of occasions with Tfl. When I renewed my travel card, they have twice claimed the money from my account only 1-2 months after the actual transaction (not as bad as your case of four months though).

As DC says, try speaking to your bank, good chances of them understanding and waiving any charges you may have incurred. I personally take care of such situations by entering any transactions I make on an excel sheet, which immediately updates my account balances, etc. which I have on the same excel sheet. You do get sophisticated software to do this for you now, though I've never used any of them.

Debt_Free_Chick

The only way of avoiding this is to track your expenditure i.e. every transaction that goes through your account - or rather, every one that SHOULD go through the account. At the end of the month, reconcile your records to your bank statement and you will see which ones have not yet "cleared". The uncleared ones should then reduce the balance shown on your statement.

Or just buy MS Money, as it does this for you ;-)

zacspeed_2

Thanks for your replies guys.
I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet on this one, But I think I'll try to appeal to my bank managers human side (?!) & see if they will let me off this time.

ukric

I have every sympathy with you, definately speak to your bank, but technically it is you that is at fault, harsh but true. Any transaction you make you should have the funds to cover, for example, if you wrote a chq you are expected to have the funds in the account to cover it, if the person you pay it to doesnt claim it for a while you are still expected to have that in your account when they claim it. Same with a POS.

zacspeed_2

Went into bank yesterday & explained my predicament.
They will NOT charge me for such a small amount (£9)
I love you HSBC

davidcampbell

happy ending

Curry_Queen

Glad to see it's all turned out ok in the end, but you might want to think about getting MS Money, as suggested above, or setting up a spreadsheet to help monitor all your transactions and balance them against your statements.

I almost ran into a similar problem as you around Xmas time but thankfully MS Money kept me on track. A couple of transactions hadn't yet cleared in my bank (Lloyds) despite initially being deducted from available funds but then completely disappeared from the system. I'd even made further transactions at the same store which cleared as usual, so I wasn't sure what had happened. However, I made sure there was enough money to cover them just in case, which I'm glad I did as they suddenly appeared on my statement a few weeks later :rolleyes:

I tend to work from MS Money to keep track of my account balances as there are often uncleared payments pending at the bank and it can get confusing if, like me, you use your debit card a lot! You just have to remember to input all your transactions!

davidcampbell

Curry_Queen wrote:

I almost ran into a similar problem as you around Xmas time but thankfully MS Money kept me on track. A couple of transactions hadn't yet cleared in my bank (Lloyds) despite initially being deducted from available funds but then completely disappeared from the system.

this wll be because your bank will keep the amount pending for 3 working days. if the retailer still hasnt claimed the funds in those 3 working days the mony will go back onto your balance (but crucially not show as pending - which causes the problems in some cases)

reason for this is, once retailer has authorisation they can collect the funds whenever they like (up to 6 months). most collect it quickly in a day or two, for obvious reasons, but if they dont you could potentially have a transaction outstanding for a long time which is tying up money you could be using elsewhere

DC

Curry_Queen

Thanks for explaining that David

This has puzzled me for a while as I've noticed a few occasions where my available balance has increased again before a transaction finally clears, hence why I prefer to rely on my own records.

This does have it's benefits in some circumstances though, and I'm glad Lloyds are so quick off the mark to drop pending payments. I had a major problem with Paypal last year debiting my card twice on every transaction I made (although only one payment would be taken) and the Halifax would keep the extra payment pending for up to 10 days meaning I couldn't use that money till it dropped off. They even refused a DD payment because of this and tried to charge me for it :mad: