Lumie Light Therapy

meanstreak

Hello all,

The wife wanted to purchase something from this company (http://www.lumie.com) on Saturday morning and tried to use her debit card. However, she had accidentally not changed her billing address from work to home, so the payment was rejected twice.

Imagine her shock, however, when she checked her bank account and found her balance had gone down commensurate with the two 'failed' payments. She called them on Monday and they said it would be back in her account soon. However, it is now Wednesday and the money is still not back in her account (neither is a record of the payments) and she is getting slightly concerned. She has called them and the bank and they have both basically told her to 'be patient' but to me this seems patently unfair that a failed web payment can 'reserve' money in this way - especially as the amount is for two identical payments that failed both times on the billing address check.

It also explicitly states on their website that "Payment is not taken until your order is ready to be dispatched." (http://www.lumie.com/shop/shop-faqs).

What say you MoneySavingExperts - has anyone else had this kind of thing happen to them when shopping online? What are out legal options if we have to take it that far?

Cheers,

Dan

p00hsticks

It's most likely down to the bank rather than the retailer. Some banks will automatically adjust the available balance on the account as soon as they see an authorisation request from a credit or debit card transaction to effectively 'reserve' the amount. If the retailer doesn't actually process the payment within a given timeframe (usually about a week) then the 'reservation' drops off and the available balance is restored.

IMO, banks can't really win on this one - if they reduce the balance straight away as part of the card authorisation process then it causes problems like this one if the merchant then rejects the payment, but if they wait until they actually get the full payment details from the merchant via the card company (Visa, Mastercard etc), which takes at least a day, then other customers who aren't good at tracking their transactions will complain that the 'available balance' doesn't reflect the latest position and could cause them to go overdrawn and incur charges.

visidigi

meanstreak wrote: »

the money is still not back in her account (neither is a record of the payments)

that means its an authorisation, not a payment and therefore the amount has been reserved, not taken. Authorisations can last up to 10 days - if not confirmed by the retailer then they are returned to you by default.

Nothing to be concerned about yet...

meanstreak

The money finally went back into her account yesterday evening, so this matter is closed I suppose.

I still don't think it's right that a retailer/bank/whoever can 'reserve' money on someone's account for days when the transaction fails. I've used plenty of online shopping websites where I've accidentally got some details wrong and the transaction hasn't gone through and this hasn't happened. It's all down to whoever Lumie are using as their payment gateway provider IMO.

p00hsticks

meanstreak wrote: »

It's all down to whoever Lumie are using as their payment gateway provider IMO.

Having worked in the industry, I'm pretty sure that it's not - it's down to whoever your wife banks with. As an educated guess at how it's happened, the bank have authorised the transaction as being basically Ok, but returned a flag to Lumie to say that the billing address they have on record doesn't match the delivery postcode that Lumie sent as part of the authorisation details. They've then chosen to "reserve" the money on the strength of providing that authorisation by reducing the available balance on the account. On recieving the authorisation acknowledgement, Lumie have (quite legitimately) decided that they are not going to accept the payment (the retailer is permitted by the card company to deliver to addresses other than the billing address, but has less rights in the case of fraud if they chose to do so, and so may decline to proceed at this point) and so simply not forwarded the payment details to their payment gateway provider.

As I said in my previous post, for every post like yours (and it comes up fairly frequently) saying they think it is wrong for a bank to do this, there will be another on this forum from someone who is with a bank who doesn't do it, complaining because they checked their available balance before spending money, only to find that it didn't reflect payments that they had made a day or two earlier that hadn't yet been fully processed.

I think the only think to do is to try to decide which way you want it and chose your bank accordingly (I don't know which banks do what in what circumstances). Even then, you can't always rely on the system donig what you want it to - for example, if the retailer can't reach the bank for an authorisation, some people would want the transaction to be accepted anyhow, others would say it should be rejected.

And if a payment gets rejected once, don't just try it again !

meanstreak

I bank with Alliance & Leicester/Santander - the same as my wife - and this is the first I've ever heard of this happening. I could go on Amazon now, try to buy something, get my billing address wrong, have the payment rejected, check my balance and... it won't have decreased!

So there you go. I may not have worked in the industry, but surely this *proves* it's nothing to do with *our* bank?

p00hsticks

meanstreak wrote: »

I bank with Alliance & Leicester/Santander - the same as my wife - and this is the first I've ever heard of this happening. I could go on Amazon now, try to buy something, get my billing address wrong, have the payment rejected, check my balance and... it won't have decreased!

So there you go. I may not have worked in the industry, but surely this *proves* it's nothing to do with *our* bank?

If I was a betting person, I'd have put money on you saying it was A&L/ Santander

And if I was better at searching these forums, I could find previous threads from A&L / SAntander custoners detailing exact the same as you describe.

I'm not suggesting you try it, but I'd also be quite surprised if Amazon did actually reject the payment in the circumstances you describe - in my experience they'll deliver pretty much anywhere.

As part of the authorisation process, the merchant can pass the bank details like the Card Verification Value, the billing house number/postcode etc. The bank will choose whether to authorise the transaction or not, and if it does authorise the transaction will tell the merchant whether these details match what they have on record for you. It's then up to the merchant to decide in whether they want to proceed with the transaction or not.

If the details don't match, some merchants will choose to proceed with the transaction regardless (I don't think they even need to have told the bank the address details in the first place), accepting that in this case they lay themselves more open to liability for fraudulent transactions. Others, such as those dealing exclusively with high value portable goods which are more likely to be targets for fraud, may choose to reject the payment at this point, and it's with these that you'll potentially see the problem. (And some compromise, and say that the first order from a new customer must go to the billing address, and can be changed for subsequent orders.

I suspect Amazon tends towards the first type of merchant, and Lumie to the second.

serious_saver

This is quite a common problem and it can also happen if you type the wrong password in during a verification process (those verified by vis type things).

The bank ring-fences the money for a period of time (usually about 14 days but this depends on your bank.) In theory you should be able to contact the bank and verify the payment, thus allowing it to go through, although I have no idea how you would go about this. Often the company at the other end (in this case Lumie) don't even realise a payment has been made.

Once the ring-fence period is up the money is automatically refunded. Not that this helps if you've been forced to go overdrawn or to buy the item from somewhere else in the meantime.