Vanquis - payment not taken from my bank?

rachymoo

Hi,

Hoping someone can help. Last night I made a payment with my debit card to Vanquis. I don't have a direct debit set up so I always pay with my debit card every month and usually, although it takes a couple of days to actually show on my statement, it comes off my available balance on my bank straight away.

However last night I made quite a large payment (pretty much the whole balance) and I've just checked my internet banking and it's still showing on my available balance. Checked Vanquis and no sign of it on there either.

Is anyone aware of any problems or has it happened to anyone else? I'm tempted to just try paying again or phoning them and paying over the phone but I don't want the payment to end up being taken twice! Any help or advice would be much appreciated, thank you.

KxMx

I would contact your bank in the first instance, see if they can see anything from their end.
I always take and save a screenshot after making payments, these can come in handy as proof.

rachymoo

Thanks for your reply. I’ve called my bank and they’ve said it looks like the payment has been declined because there were some other pending payments on my account that hadn’t yet come off the available balance,which meant there wasn’t enough left to cover the payment I’d made. To be honest I found this quite odd as usually my available balance is always updated instantly. But I thought she must know what she’s talking about so I took her word for it. She told me how much I actually had available and I asked her if I’m OK to go and try to make the payment again, and that it won’t end up being taken twice – that would leave me massively overdrawn!! She said that was fine.

So I’ve just gone to make the payment and surprise surprise –payment declined. Seriously baffled and confused now! I’m just a bit worried, I want the payment to go through and show on my credit card account because at the moment my money seems to be hovering in cyberspace somewhere and it’s making me panic a bit!

rachymoo

Bit of an update – well after speaking to the bank yesterday and them telling me my available balance was less than what my internet banking was showing because of pending payments – low and behold, today the 'pending payments' are showing on the statements but my available balance is still the same as it was yesterday. I’ve heard Natwest (my bank) had some issues yesterday and people were unable to make payments etc yesterday so I’m thinking maybe this is something to do with it?

Anyway – I phoned Vanquis this morning and explained and they checked and confirmed the payment hadn’t gone through. I asked if I could make the payment over the phone, the lady said that was fine so I did. She then told me my payment is “being processed by our payment team and should be completed within 3 working days, don’t worry it’s probably being reviewed because it’s such a large amount”. Checked internet banking and it’s STILL not come off my available balance. Every single time I’ve ever made payment to them in the past it’s come off straight away.

Can anyone help/advise as to what I can do from here? I seem to be having really trouble getting them to accept money from me which is all very odd! Feeling really quite stressed about this now. Thank you

Buzby

The RBS group is still having issues reported - and as this is the latest in a stream of banking failures, doesn't bode well for the future either!