Caxton FX Prepaid Card Negative Balance!

spud2001

Hi,

Last October I obtained a Caxton FX Prepaid Dollar Card which I used for my American holiday no problem at all, topping up and spending as I needed. Afterwards I didn't use it and pretty much forgot about it until today I received an email (over a year later!) saying this: -

"Unable to get through to you by telephones (land line no: ...) as line dead.
Please will you contact Caxton FX on tel., no: 020 7201 0540 to discuss the balance on the above-mentioned card after you’ve looked on your account."

So I logged into my account and found a negative balance of -$185 which was quite a shock! I looked at the transaction history and there were no dodgy transactions and it hadn't been touched for over a year and the balance of all the transactions added to to a positive number. But when I looked closer I saw that there were 2 transactions a week after my holiday labelled as "Credit Adjustment", for $1 and $274. When I then totalled up my transactions less these credit adjustments it came to the -$185.

Does anyone have any advice about what I should do? I certainly don't want to be paying £115 or so to them for a card that it's surely impossible to overspend on a year down the line!

Many thanks and any help is greatly appreciated,
Tom

Rightclick

Tom,

Have you called them? Surely the best thing to do is to talk to them about this - until you do that, you will not know what the reason for this is and they will probably be able to explain how this came about. If you don't owe the money then you don't owe the money - but sticking your head in the sand and not communicating with them is the worst possible thing to do. I have used caxton in the past and their accounts people are remarkably human for a card company.

spud2001

So I called them and they said due to a hotel taking a deposit which was authorised for around $80 but then settled for around $250 (the full cost of staying) it caused the negative balance and now I owe the remaining balance.

Is there anything I can do about this or do I have to pay for their oversight?

Many thanks,
Tom

Mr._H_2

This sounds like your oversight (not realising how much the hotel charged), not theirs.

SnowTiger

This appears to be covered by the T&Cs of the card.

http://www.caxtonfxcard.com/termsncondition_visa.asp?dist=CAXTGENL:

15. Shortfall

Authorisation will usually be requested for all Transactions. However in the unlikely event that a Transaction is completed when there are insufficient funds for that Transaction on the Prepaid Card (a "Shortfall"), the Shortfall shall be reimbursed by You. You agree that once We make this Shortfall known to You, We may charge You for the Shortfall amount.

However, you may have a get-out under section 12:

12. Refunding Transactions

You may be entitled to claim a refund in relation to Transactions where:

[...]

• a pre-authorised Transaction did not specify the exact amount at the time of its authorisation and the amount charged by a supplier is more than You or an Additional Cardholder could reasonably have expected taking into account normal spending patterns on the Prepaid Card or the circumstances of the Transaction.
• A claim for a refund in the circumstances set out above will not be accepted if the amount of the Transaction was made known to You at least 4 weeks before the Transaction date.
• We were notified of the unauthorized/incorrectly executed Transaction within 13 months of the debit date.