Credit Card Declined, Payment still Taken

meer53

Ben8282 wrote: »

The only people who could possibly answer this are the shop.

Do you still have the 'declined' receipt? You could try disputing the charge on the grounds that it was declined. Produce the declined receipt and say you paid cash when the card was declined if you want to be dishonest. You may get away with this as the shop would both have to prove you did not and admit that their incompetant assistant had let you leave the shop with the goods without paying.

In fact, if you have a till receipt for the payment of the goods in addition to the declined credit card receipt, I'm not sure that you actually owe the shop any money at all. Your credit card ws declined. You paid for the goods in cash. You have a receipt.

Does your credit card statement show a transaction date in addition to a date entered (on the account) for this charge. If yes and the transaction date is wrong, you could try disputing the charge on the grounds that you did not make any transaction on that date and the only time you have ever attempted to use your card in that shop was on xxx date when the transaction was declined.

If the shop realised many weeks later that you had obtained goods without paying for them they should have contacted you and asked you to pay although it should not have taken them 3 months to realise that the till was £170 short. You have never given them any authority to make any further attempts to charge your card.

I am also a bit puzzled if a chip/pin terminal was used for the original transaction how the shop managed to obtain sufficient information for them to be able to attempt to debit your card 3 months later. They would not have a record of either your pin or the 3 digit security number on the back of your card nor should they have access to your full card number. They should only be able to see the last 4 digits of the card number on their copy of the receipt.

Are you sure that the original charge was actually declined?

There is a very big difference between the billing of a charge being delayed, which used to happen quite often in the days of manual charge forms especially with international transactions, and a shop subsequently billing a card at a later date and without authorization for a transaction which was declined, which is illegal. The fact that you owe them the money does not entitle them to take it in such a manner.

I'm sure that there is a time limit on debiting transactions to a credit card. I don't know how long exactly, but remember if you write a cheque it can be presented for payment up to 6 months from the date written on it, so a credit card charge would be at least that. You cannot really have any valid complaint at the billing of a charge being delayed; you are being given extended interest-free credit.

So, your advice to the OP is to lie ?

There is no set timescale in which a transaction has to debit an account. Card issuers have a chargeback right if it is more than 6 months, but then the retailer has the right to reject that chargeback too.
I can't see what the issue is here, the OP has the goods, they owe the money, if it's caused them any financial loss (they havent mentioned this) then they should contact the retailer for this to be refunded as a gesture of goodwill. I've seen transactions debit accounts 2 years after they were made, it's up to you to check your accounts and to make sure you know if there are any transactions which haven't debited. If they haven't, you need to make sure that the funds are available in your account for when they do debit. Some retailer discrepancies only come to light when there is an audit or their accountant is doing their books.

bengal-stripe

Ben8282 wrote: »

Do you still have the 'declined' receipt? You could try disputing the charge on the grounds that it was declined.

Hard to believe, that any retailer could not see (and hear) the difference between an authorisation and a decline, and, despite the transaction being declined, still continues to hand over the goods.

Could it be the card was not declined at all, but properly authorized and only the posting of the transaction was delayed (for whatever reason)? The OP might have thought the card was declined as the amount in question wasn't taken out of his account. Now with three months delay the item has been booked; after all the retailer has six months time to claim and the original authorisation will be valid for that period. That scenario looks to me far more likely then a card that was initially “declined”.

In this case, nothing untoward has happened, only the transaction was late.

fozmcfc

lvm wrote: »

The inconvenience of incompetent staff not being able to process a sale correctly then waiting 3 months to take payment for goods.

The OP obviously doesn't keep as close on eye on CC transactions as is possible however this isn't a crime and the only blame lies with the business.

I definitely don't think the OP deserves to receive the goods for free but some goodwill gesture for the problem (caused wholly by the retailer) wouldn't be awful!

Yeah anyway back in the real world. :rotfl:

CAJDavidson

Wow, nice bunch hear aren't you, ask for some advice and get accused of trolling.

It is a small independent clothing shop, and as I was paying the man serving me had a phonecall, so I am presuming he just saw the receipt come out of the machine stating Declined and thought that was that, handed it to me and thought all was well.

I don't think it is worth taking it up with them as I have got the goods and they have got the payment, my main concern is a) why they took so long to make the payment; b) where my card details have been for the last 3 months and c) what's to stop them from pulling another payment if they've stored my details.

I think those have been answered now so thanks for that, and to anyone who thinks I was trolling I am sure I could of come up with something a bit more interesting, no?

I do not still have the declined receipt either so obviously there isn't really much I can do about it anyway.