how can they keep my money

mousehole17

I payed for a holiday to voyager by phone
The next day I checked my account and £866 had been taken.Fine, but also another £866 has disappeared. I have been back and forth between the travel company and the nationwide to try and sort it. They both claim it is the others fault and have been told by bank that I have to wait 7 days for the money to go back into my account.
I am now overdrawn, had to cancel direct debits and must borrow money from family for insurance, spending money, etc. Can anyone tell me how this can be legal?

fluffnutter

Sounds like a pre-authorisation whereby the original amount is 'ring-fenced' prior to the actual amount being taken. Supermarkets do it all the time when taking payment for online deliveries. Because companies are lazy they don't match the pre-authorisation to the actual payment, hence you end up with two debits. Although one payment only ever leaves your account, double the funds are unavailable for a period (typically 7 days) giving rise to the problems you face.

Nationwide are technically correct in that this is Voyager's doing, and they must release the money. However, as your bank, they're being completely unhelpful in trying to resolve this for you. I'd be back on to Voyager with a letter stating that they must release your money plus pay any fees you've incurred. Give them a reasonable time to refund the fees (although I'd expect to see the funds released immediately). If they've not done so within whatever timescale you're happy with, send them a letter before action threatening them with the small claims court.

Contact your bank and let them know what you've done. I'd also write a snotty letter questioning their customer service and support. They know full well what's going on - it happens a lot. To allow you to continue to accrue charges and penalties is downright bad service, frankly.

I don't think it should be legal. It's a terrible practice.

Mimi_Arc_en_ciel

I had same thing happen with me last month. I would double check with the bank - Natwest informed me that when this happened to me it COULD take up to 30 days for the pre-authorisation to automatically cancel.

It isnt the banks fault - It's the company. They have requested the money twice. The company need to ring and cancel the duplicated request from their end then it can hit your bank account as soon as 24 hours. They may say they cant do this - they're lying. Their accounts department can very easily ring and cancel it.

With regards to going over drawn - The bank shouldnt charge you any fee's (natwest didnt charge me) as it isnt your fault.

What you could do - if the company is being arsey - is report the correct trnsaction as fraud and have it returned to you, then let the pre-authorisation go through.

It's legal because they have requested it with your card/details - the bank wont cancel it because the bank cant prove they have took it twice by accident - for all they know you've brought two holidays. The company KNOW they have over charged you and that its their error - more than likely if it was done wit a card it could be their PDQ machine thats faulty.

As mentioned, this happened to me, I managed to get it sorted within 3 days - Good luck!

Techhead_2

Some urban myths that need clearing up.

When you use your card, the retailer gets an authorisation from the bank. The bank then 'hides' the money so you can't spend it. The retailer then claims this money from the bank. (Normally overnight or next morning). The bank matches the claim to the money they are holding and the amount is debited from your account.

Sometimes though things go wrong, for example the total may change between authorisation and claim. The bank can't then match the two up and the money remains 'hidden' for a few days. Its still in your account but until its released you can't access it.

Sometimes the bank makes a mistake and again you can't access the money.

The retailer can go through the card processor and the bank to cancel the authorisation. But this takes almost as long as waiting for the hold to be released.

You would need to find out if a mistake was made and by whom.

fluffnutter

Techhead wrote: »

Some urban myths that need clearing up.

When you use your card, the retailer gets an authorisation from the bank. The bank then 'hides' the money so you can't spend it. The retailer then claims this money from the bank. (Normally overnight or next morning). The bank matches the claim to the money they are holding and the amount is debited from your account.

Sometimes though things go wrong, for example the total may change between authorisation and claim. The bank can't then match the two up and the money remains 'hidden' for a few days. Its still in your account but until its released you can't access it.

Sometimes the bank makes a mistake and again you can't access the money.

The retailer can go through the card processor and the bank to cancel the authorisation. But this takes almost as long as waiting for the hold to be released.

You would need to find out if a mistake was made and by whom.

Do you have any other examples of what might go wrong? I appreciate that a common cause of this problem is that the amount of the original order and the final order differ slightly (as is often the case in online shopping) but that's not the case here (or doesn't appear to be).

TBH, the 'bank can't then match the two up' doesn't really cut it. Not when you're 866 quid down. This is a recent and increasing phenomenon, causing untold heartache for customers and it's hardly a technically difficult thing to resolve. I think it's about time the banks and the retailers sorted it out, frankly. Why should the consumer suffer?

arcon5

Mimi_Arc_en_ciel wrote: »

It isnt the banks fault - It's the company. They have requested the money twice. The company need to ring and cancel the duplicated request from their end then it can hit your bank account as soon as 24 hours. They may say they cant do this - they're lying. Their accounts department can very easily ring and cancel it.

They don't even need to telephone them. The pre-auth can be voided. It's just the telephone operatives don't have permissions to do so. It would take somebody with access less than 30 seconds.

arcon5

fluffnutter wrote: »

Do you have any other examples of what might go wrong? I appreciate that a common cause of this problem is that the amount of the original order and the final order differ slightly (as is often the case in online shopping) but that's not the case here (or doesn't appear to be).

TBH, the 'bank can't then match the two up' doesn't really cut it. Not when you're 866 quid down. This is a recent and increasing phenomenon, causing untold heartache for customers and it's hardly a technically difficult thing to resolve. I think it's about time the banks and the retailers sorted it out, frankly. Why should the consumer suffer?

It could be down to a change of ID number.
Or a slightly different card name or address perhaps.

Making the banks system think its a completely seperate transaction.

It is ridiculous nobody is willing to help, especially with such a large sum of money.

fluffnutter

arcon5 wrote: »

It could be down to a change of ID number.
Or a slightly different card name or address perhaps.

Making the banks system think its a completely seperate transaction.

It is ridiculous nobody is willing to help, especially with such a large sum of money.

I agree. Being a veritable coder on a myriad of systems I can well appreciate how these things might arise. What frustrates me is the shoulder-sloping approach of both banks and retailers, the 'computer says no' attitude.

The OP has 866 quid that he/she can't access all the while accruing penalties and charges! That's absolutely ridiculous and this concept of pre-authorisation needs to be more tightly regulated. It is not difficult to design systems to prevent the majority of these hiccups.

arcon5

fluffnutter wrote: »

I agree. Being a veritable coder on a myriad of systems I can well appreciate how these things might arise. What frustrates me is the shoulder-sloping approach of both banks and retailers, the 'computer says no' attitude.

The OP has 866 quid that he/she can't access all the while accruing penalties and charges! That's absolutely ridiculous and this concept of pre-authorisation needs to be more tightly regulated. It is not difficult to design systems to prevent the majority of these hiccups.

Fortunately, from what i'm aware (and seen) fees won't actually be incurred if ops 'available balance' is overdrawn. It's only if that payment is then called and his actual balance is overdrawn that fees will be incurred.

But that's irrelevant anyway, over the significant inconvenience this [STRIKE]could[/STRIKE] has caused. Not everybody has friends or family willing (or able) to lend this amount of money so if this was a last minute deal it could inpact on their ability to actually go on the holiday, if the money was their spending money or to be used to get to the airport for example.

But for major institutes suchas banks to apparently be able to do nothing is uttler bull. And as far as the systems designs are concerned, I completely agree most of cases like these can infact be prevented!