Whos to Blame Lloyds or Sainsburys?

rich_shot2003

I am so mad with whats happened when using my debit card in Sainsburys this afternoon.

I got £38 pounds worth of shopping and went to pay using there self service tills and it came back declined so did it again and the same thing happened so had to leave the store without my shopping.

so got home and looked on my online and seen that the £38 has been taken off my account so called bank who looked into it and there was a code by the sum that had been taken which the guy didnt know what it was but found out that it was a code for a paypoint fault so he looked to see what they could do and nothing as they said it was down to Sainsburys and to give them a call which i did.

Sainsbury said they will not do anything as it was banks fault and to call them back but again they said it was down to Sainsburys.

so the bank offered to put £10 into my account for the cost of calls made to them today and said the £38 would drop off my account after 5 days but didnt know if it was 5 days or 5 working days.

so is there anything more i can do about this as this is not my fault and im not sure whos fault it is but i now dont have the money now for the shopping.

stclair

You will have to wait for the pre authorisation to drop off.

The bank will not cancel the pre authorisation as they will not know its a genuine mistake made by sainsburys.

Patience is all that is required in this instance.

Mikeyorks

rich_shot2003 wrote: »

im not sure whos fault it is .

Your Bank have accepted it if it's been deducted from 'available'? So not their fault.

So it's down to Sainsburys or the people (merchant acquirer) who do their card transactions. And they're the only ones who can remove the ring fence before the bank software gets fed up of waiting for the debit and adds the money back to available. But getting someone in the store who knows how to neutralise it - is the difficult bit. And you need the value / more or less precise time in order they can ID the transaction ..... as you won't have a receipt?

It's 'working days' .... I'm afraid.

rich_shot2003

Many thanks guys

so looks like i will just have to wait.

How much does this happen to people?

if it happens alot you would have though the banks would do something so it does not happen.

Mikeyorks

rich_shot2003 wrote: »

How much does this happen to people?

I always use Debit Cards - never cash - and have never experienced it. It's happened to my wife once - Tesco petrol station. Purely co-incidentally I went there later in the day and it was clear the till was playing up.

So it mainly seems to be the supermarkets etc where the tills are heavily used and - unfortunately - the staff seem oblivious of the problems it can cause. Customers removing the card prematurely is also a good source of such errors.

Not much the Banks can do. From their side it's a legitimate authorisation. It's the merchant acquirers who perhaps should do more patrolling of apparent duplicates and where one of the transactions isn't fully complete.

reclusive46

Sainsburys is an absolute nightmare card machine wise. My cards don't work half the time and have to be reentered and sometimes even swiped to get them to work. I've seen other people have the same issue.

dzug1

I've occasionally experienced this problem - but never at Sainsburys.

And I'm pretty sure the bank CAN sort it if they wish. A&L (before they were Santander) did it for me once on a large (£2K) transaction that had been authorised twice

Mikeyorks

dzug1 wrote: »

And I'm pretty sure the bank CAN sort it if they wish.

As it is the Bank system that returns the money to 'available' - when the debit doesn't materialise. Then clearly they can do that at an earlier stage.
But they're not going to do that without significant evidence this is a phantom transaction. Which normally entails agreement from the retailer. So - if the retailer concurs there's a problem - it's generally easier to resolve it at source, with the retailer.

rich_shot2003

Sainsburys called this afternoon and offered me £20 Shopping card which i have taken for the problems ive had and will just let the money fall back onto my account next week now.

but well done for Sainsburys for calling me and doing there best to sort it out.

Gromitt

Well done! I never knew Sainsburys gave out such things, but they obviously thought there was a problem at their end.

Plus the £10 from the bank when it wasn't even their fault, bonus!

As a side note, if your signed up with NHS Discounts you can get another 4% off your shopping by purchasing (or reloading) a pre-paid card.

andrew-the-cat

Sainsbury's give out vouchers all the time, if you make a genuine complaint you can be guaranteed to get something out of them even without asking. Most of the time it's for home delivery customers if the delivery is late or there is a serious problem with it - they will give a £10 voucher to the customer.

A friend of mine bought a multipack of crisps a couple of months ago and it was a week out of date, she took it back and they refunded the crisps, gave her another packet for free AND a £10 voucher.