Europcar Pre-Authorisation Refund time?

CreditCrunchie

Hi all,

I rented a car from La Rochelle airport, france for 4 days. booked in advance and paid with Atlas Car rentals. Gave the car back at the end of the period, all signed off perfect, no damage. The chap said the card should be fine to use that day as the pre-authorisation (deposit) had now been cancelled on their part. However the amount was still showing as unavailable to me.

Just checked my card statement (2 days later) and seen this pre-authorisation is now showing as a "pending transaction" and the amount is still not available to spend.

Is this normal?

I know last time we rented a car (different company) it did take about 10 days till the money was available to us again. I am worried however that this is showing on my barclaycard as a pending transaction.

Foxy-Stoat_3

Call Barclaycard and ask.

If its been declined then you are close/over your limit.

CreditCrunchie

I know that Foxy. The amount took me to my limit. But once the pre-authorisation deposit amount is cancelled, as europcar told me it would be that day, the funds are again available. I'm asking how long it usually takes, as it clearly wasn't same day as they told me.

Also it's only a pre0authorisation, not a charge. So why is it showing as a pending transaction on my card statement?

Has anyone experienced renting with europcar or similar and can advise?

CreditCrunchie

Just rang barclaycard who were clueless. Have emailed them.

Does anyone know?

InsideInsurance

Its 90% down to your card issuer and not the merchant.

Release of authorisations are notoriously unreliable and frequently highly manual but the authorisation automatically drops off after a preset time as defined by your card issuer.

It is fairly standard practice for card issuers to show these transactions in the pending section. When 99.9% of transactions are done there is an initial call to ask for authorisation at which point the card issuer ringfences the money and returns an authorisation number. The merchant then can go back with a request for the funds to actually be transferred quoting the auth code. Sometimes this is done instantly, sometimes its done at a later date and sometimes the request for funds never comes.

A card issuer when it gets an auth request doesnt know the merchants intent and so does the same for Eurocar where your unlikely to have the monies claimed as they would with Waitrose where its almost certain the claim will come

CreditCrunchie

thank ypu. just spoke to Europcar who confirmed it can take 3 - 10 working days. WHY I have no idea... except maybe they get to claim interest on the amount for the time held?

Anyways, will just hope it is all ok after 10 days.

thanks for the reply Inside insurance.

InsideInsurance

CreditCrunchie wrote: »

thank ypu. just spoke to Europcar who confirmed it can take 3 - 10 working days. WHY I have no idea... except maybe they get to claim interest on the amount for the time held?

They dont get interest as your bank hasnt given them any money, nor does your bank charge you any interest as you havent actually made a payment. There is simply money ringfenced to try and prevent you overspending against your limit

Its your card issuer that is causing it to be 3-10 days and the large range is to do with the range of how different banks deal with these things rather than variability within the merchants processes

Ben_McCrea

Quite a lot of nonsense on here about card authorizations. I worked for HSBC for a few years and so am qualified to comment. Any card transaction will instantly check available funds prior to taking payment and reserves those funds for the payment - or rejects payment if funds are not available. The merchant can put through an authorization check for a certain amount without taking payment. The banking system then assumes that payment will be taken at some future point and will reserve those available funds for the possible payment. If payment is not taken, the authorization will drop out of the system anything between 5-14 days after the authorization is made. The bank should not cancel authorization as the bank does not know the intention of the merchant. The merchant can cancel an authorization if it chooses to do so. I only ever overided an authorization in extreme situations such as when someone's holiday in New York would have been ruined when the Waldorf Astoria put through a 1000 dollar authorization for a 40 dollar breakfast. Most bank staff would not dare cancel an authorization and will advise customers to speak to the merchant/vendor.

Astronaughtwannabe

If it's relevant - I frequently rented cars from Enterprise and the funds were available 2 days after.