Beware of credit card payments on Ebookers website

kaymensah

Last Friday, 14/12 I tried to book a flight for the family costing 3.2k on Ebookers website. I entered details of my credit card with a credit limit of 4.4k and I was told that the transaction could not be completed; I should check my credit card details and try again. I did that and tried again. The same message. So I tried again. I got frustrated so I used another card with a higher credit limit £10k. I tried 3x on that card over a two day period without any success. On Sunday, I checked my accounts online and I noticed that the available balance on the first card had reduced by 3.2k and on the 2nd card by £9.6k. I wanted to purchase the ticket before x'mas, so I called the bank to discuss the issue. I was told that Ebookers had made requests to the Banks for those amounts which the banks have approved; when Ebookers were telling me that the transactions could not be processed they were actually asking the banks for the money! So as far as the banks are concerned those credits are no longer available for me to use. The only way to resolve this is to ask Ebookers to send a fax to the Banks for the request to be cancelled and the money released. I phoned Ebookers who said they were going to do that for me. I phoned the Banks today to learn that Ebookers had not done what they said they were going to do. I think this is very unfair to me as an individual. My question is why should Ebookers request payment for transactions that clearly did not go through? At this time of the year, to be deprived of the use of one's credit card is not an ideal situation. Has anyone had a similar experience?

forgotmyname

Had several websites lately fail to complete. Or so they made you think.

Experian, Ebay, DVLA websites included. All said transaction failed. I only wanted an experian statutory report to make sure all was well with my file before applying for a CC.
1st transaction failed. A box actually appeared saying no money will be taken.

Thought browser issue, So tried again with a different one. Same error.
Then i find they did take the money for both transactions.

When i got my tax disc online i had the same fault but the message there said i could still tax it at the post office. But a disc arrived a few days later.

Porcupine

Did they actually take the money? As in the items appear on your statement? Or just 'funds available'?

Usually what happens is the merchant places a hold on the funds for a period. For example, you take a hotel room and pay the bill in advance on your card. The hotel might place a hold on extra funds to cover the minibar or room service. They don't actually take the money but you're just prevented from spending it elsewhere. Eventually they either release the funds or the hold times out (I'm unclear whether it's the merchant or the bank that does the timeout).

Often what happens is the merchant contacts the card company to ask for the money. The card company places a hold on the money and makes you do the Verified by Visa dance, in which something goes wrong (lose your internet connection at the crucial moment or the server crashes). The hold remains but usually times out in a few days.

If something goes wrong, especially with big amounts, the best way is to freeze. Don't keep retrying the transaction, call up the bank and see what happened. If the bank says there's no problem, call the merchant and query it.

I'm had this happen a lot with booking air tickets - mostly the tickets were never booked, but in one time they were booked but marked as not paid for (maybe they expected me to turn up in person with a pile of cash?) Result was that I took the last seat on the plane (it was a small plane) and I could no longer book on that flight. A phone call sorted it.

kaymensah

Thanks. But I think the money should be made available to the card holder if the merchant has not claimed it after 2 days. It's 6 working days now and the money is still on hold. I guess the merchant pays some form of interest to the bank, otherwise it is counter-intuitive for a bank to allow this to happen.

jonesMUFCforever

Nobody gains from this as the money is not held by the bank or the merchant - it is floating in cyber space.
The only person to lose out is the customer but I can't think of a better system that would work cheaper than we have now.

I would imagine there are many millions of transactions processed every day but not many are declined. If there was a major problem the Daily Mail would have picked up on it LOL.

sharpy2010

I cant see why the payment doesn't get processed in such a way that it either gets approved by the bank, and the merchant, and the retailer, immediately and thus the funds are gone - or it gets declined in which case the funds are still available to use immediately.

jonesMUFCforever

sharpy2010 wrote: »

I cant see why the payment doesn't get processed in such a way that it either gets approved by the bank, and the merchant, and the retailer, immediately and thus the funds are gone - or it gets declined in which case the funds are still available to use immediately.

That would require everybody - banks and merchants to completely overhaul their systems - would you be prepared to pay for it by having to pay a fee for every transactions?

sharpy2010

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

That would require everybody - banks and merchants to completely overhaul their systems - would you be prepared to pay for it by having to pay a fee for every transactions?

No lol, I wasn't aware of the logistics of getting it done - I just think its a shame it doesn't work that way.