Debenhams MasterCard: please help!

Kirenandadele

Hi guys,

Last week I went to use my debenhams MasterCard in a supermarket and the transaction wouldn't go through.


I put my pin in and when it got to the next stage it said not authorised. I put a different pin in and it said invalid pin so I tried again with the original pin and again it said not authorised. I was given receipts for all these declines.


I was flabbergasted so thought I would try on a cash point and lowand behold it worked so I paid cash.


I then received a letter saying I was £345 over my limit. The amount adds up to two x the amount I tried to pay originally.


I phoned them today upon receiving the letter and they told me a new balance which was within my credit limit. Clearly the two "failed" transactions have gone through to their systems so there was nothing wrong with the card.


They told me they will not refund the cash advance fee as I shouldn't have withdrawn the cash.. What can I do?

[Deleted User]

Firstly, pay off the cash advance as quickly as you can to minimise interest.

It sounds like a Mastercard issue, so you will probably be hard pressed to receive any goodwill payment. Although if you write to Debenhams, you may well get a £10 voucher (even though they are nothing to do with the operation of the card).

Lastly, apply for another card so you always have a back up.

InsideInsurance

You'd need to find out what happened really..... with it being a cardholder present transaction I neither have as much knowledge nor can think of what could have gone wrong to cause the problem.

It sounds like the money was ringfenced but the system at the supermarket treated it as a decline. As the supermarket didnt take the funds they've subsequently been released back to you. This could be a fault with the bank, the supermarket or one of the middlemen involved in the dataflow.

If your bank sent the correct authorisation to the acquiring bank and either they messed up the response or the supermarkets systems messed up receiving the response then its not your banks fault nor their liability to put it right.

Firstly register a complaint with your bank and if they say they did authorise the payment then ask for them to put that in writing to you. Then complain to the supermarket armed with it in writing that your bank did authorise the payment and therefore you hold them responsible.

Depending on how much your talking about it may be they just payup on the grounds of customer service.

In future through, if the card declines unexpectedly either use a different card or call the card issuer rather than doing a cash withdraw on a credit card