Asda home shopping - holding money

blissfulbabe

blissfulbabe wrote: »

If you 100% sure that the cost of the shop has been paid out of your account you can call your bank and ask them to release the money that Asda has 'reserved'. I bank with the Coop and have no problem doing this.

Have just found out the hard way that the Coop won't do this anymore as they have 'changed their systems' - mega embarrasment when I tried to pay for lunch today.

Gettingready - I have just had my new card from the Coop and it's a Visa debit card, not an Electron card. If you report your Electron card as stolen you should get it replaced with a Visa debit card - then you could go shopping at Mr T's

gettingready

Oh.. sorry to hear about your trouble, so embarassing when it happens isn't it? You KNOW you have money on yoru account and still you feel awful when the card gets declined....

Yes, Co Op does not release it any more as they used to before< I only found out last week hence this thread.

When you report your card as lost/stolen - does it affect your internet banking at all? Or your DD?

Thanks a lot, did not think of that.

meer53

It's not actually Asda's fault, it's the way the Coop authorisation system works. Where i work we can't remove an authorisation from a customers account under any circumstances. Asda don't remove the first authorisation, it just drops off the Coop banking system if it's not followed through. What a lot of retailers do is just process a minimum transaction, say £1 just to make sure the card is live. Maybe Asda have problems with people booking their shopping deliveries then not having the money available to pay for it, which is why they operate this system ? If that happens then they would waste a lot of time picking the shopping then trying to authorise the payment only to find that it was declined due to lack of funds. Just my theory !

Doucam

I can see what you are saying meer, but in my case the money was there, more than enough in fact but for some reason their system kept putting a £1.00 charge through every time I changed my order. Being that it was just before christmas there was a few changes due to family members calling to add or take something off!!

This then triggered the fraud thing on my account. I don't get why they have to take the £1.00 EVERY time? on the same day? surely once they have taken it they know the card is good and therefore shouldn't need to keep doing it?

I complained and they couldn't have cared less, I have also realised that they seem to have taken me off of their email advertising as I don't get anything from them anymore!

When I called about the issue the person on the phone clearly believed that the reason the payment hadn't gone through was because there wasn't enough funds in the account and pretty much refused to believe it was due to fraud checks and their systems, she was very very rude, I was crying at the time, I said I needed to take my autistic son out now which I was trying to avoid and was quite frankly astounded at just how rude she was, she actually said oh well, you'll just have to go shopping then wont you?!! Nasty.

I will never ever shop with them again due to this and the way they didn't deal with my complaint.

gettingready

Besides, it does not only happet with Co Op cards...

Twinkly

gettingready wrote: »

Besides, it does not only happet with Co Op cards...

Yep it happened this week to me this week with my halifax account hence a trawl through this site for this problem and a bump for this thread.

The bank guy told me it can only release a pending request for money if Asda or I cancelled it...- which I did and it released the cash immediately....but if this was not done by either party it could take up to 7 days to "drop off" the account.

The guy in Asda customer services advised me to write to Head office and complain but after finding this thread I've decided not to waste any more time on Asda themselves.

A few suggestions in this thread to get in touch with "the ombudsman". Who is this ombudsman of which you speak ? Has anyone actually done this and what happened ?

Frankly, this should be classed as fraud. If or when the government or police would wish to place a freeze on your bank account they must first obtain a court order to do so....so how the hell is it that a frickin supermarket can do it instantly the minute you place an order for shopping and without your knowledge. ??

Completely unacceptable. :mad:

Twinkly

Oh well ok....A google later and I find it's the OFT...yep the very same OFT that dropped it's pants, bent over and grabbed it's ankles in the face of bank charges.

Pffftttt....Fuggerrit then...I'll just shop elsewhere in future with cash.:p

johnnyboyrebel

gettingready wrote: »

Hi all,

I normally shop online at Asda and the same thing keeps on happening again.

I place an order which comes to let's say £60. In the order there are some things that come by weight or some that are unavailable at the time of delivery so when the order arrivas the amount due to pay is slightly different to the amount at the time of order (higher or lower, doe not matter - just different).

Then the correct amount is taken off from my card as payment but the other amount (from the time when order was placed) is still "pending" and I am unable to access money on my account.

It happens every single time I shop at Asda, it takes 5-10 working days for this to drop back to my acount in which time I simply can not access my money.

Normally I was calling my bank (Co-Op) and they would cancel the "pending" from Asda seeing that the money has already been taken so they would release it back to my account.

Today I was unable to do that as Co-Op said they can not do this any more and told me to call Asda. Called Asda and they said I should call my bank.

I am absolutely fuming as theoretically I have £24 on my account, but can not use it. I am behind with my TV License now because of that.

I am sure I am not the only one with this problem with Asda - apart from stopping ordering from them, what else can I do to avoid this problem in the future?

Thanks a lot...

Ignore the idiotic responses such as Gordikin's, why on earth you should ensure you have enough money in your account to cover Asda's blatant lack of payment processing knowledge is beyond me!

This is an issue at Asda's end and, depending on the payment gateway they use, should be easily resolved. It could be that noone has actually brought this up with them before in order to fix it.

If your online bill comes to £25 then it is most likely that this amount is "reserved" from your card so if you went to the cashpoint, for example, you have no access to that £25 as in effect it is already spent and gone. It sounds like it is reserved in case of the issues where when the shop is picked in the supermarket there may be shortages/substitutes. So once the shopping is delivered and is all settled, be it an extra few quid or a refund on a shortage item, then that is logged on Asda's systems and the payment is taken. With any other system, that should be it. The problem here is at that point nothing is sent back to your online account to state it is dealt with so the amount remains pending.

Unless Asda use some prehistoric payment processor then this is quite basic stuff that simply should not happen. Report it to them and they should pull their finger out and get the basic issue sorted as it's out of order.

Twinkly

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

Unless Asda use some prehistoric payment processor then this is quite basic stuff that simply should not happen. Report it to them and they should pull their finger out and get the basic issue sorted as it's out of order.

Genuinely no offence but anyone taking this advice...just be aware that this "basic stuff" has been going on for a long tim (google it). Many people have reported it and Asda give SO much of a sh*t what their customers think of them that they're still doing it, regardless. :think:

johnnyboyrebel

Twinkly wrote: »

Genuinely no offence but anyone taking this advice...just be aware that this "basic stuff" has been going on for a long tim (google it). Many people have reported it and Asda give SO much of a sh*t what their customers think of them that they're still doing it, regardless. :think:

Well Asda are crap then. It does not change the fact that from the explanation this is easy to fix.