Declined debits taken off available balance.

Broadwood

Can't find much about this problem so thought I should investigate further.

My story is as follows:

I used my debit card last Wednesday to pay for a £30 family ticket at a local heritage railway. The first attempt was DECLINED even though the PIN was verified and I had over £200 of cleared funds in my account. The lady repeated the transaction which succeeded and she gave me the two customer copies - the first of which reads "PIN VERIFIED" plus "DECLINED" and has NO authorisation number, whereas the second reads "PIN VERIFIED" and DOES have an authorisation number.

When I checked my bank account later that evening both lots of £30 had been deducted from my available balance. The following day one transaction of £30 was listed as expected.

Today one week later, the £30 from the DECLINED transaction is still missing from my available balance and my bank says it might take up to TWO WEEKS for the money to be released back on to my available balance.

If this is normal for the payments system then said system is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE and needs changing. This is, in effect, temporary unauthorised theft of account-holders' money.

Has this happened to others? What if anything is the solution?

System

Solutions:

1. Pay with cash
2. Use a credit card
3. Get an overdraft

The authorisation hold will normally drop off around 7 days

Broadwood wrote: »

Has this happened to others? What if anything is the solution?

glentoran99

Broadwood wrote: »

Can't find much about this problem so thought I should investigate further.

My story is as follows:

I used my debit card last Wednesday to pay for a £30 family ticket at a local heritage railway. The first attempt was DECLINED even though the PIN was verified and I had over £200 of cleared funds in my account. The lady repeated the transaction which succeeded and she gave me the two customer copies - the first of which reads "PIN VERIFIED" plus "DECLINED" and has NO authorisation number, whereas the second reads "PIN VERIFIED" and DOES have an authorisation number.

When I checked my bank account later that evening both lots of £30 had been deducted from my available balance. The following day one transaction of £30 was listed as expected.

Today one week later, the £30 from the DECLINED transaction is still missing from my available balance and my bank says it might take up to TWO WEEKS for the money to be released back on to my available balance.

If this is normal for the payments system then said system is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE and needs changing. This is, in effect, temporary unauthorised theft of account-holders' money.

Has this happened to others? What if anything is the solution?

Well actually its not as nothing has left your account

Broadwood

glentoran99 wrote: »

Well actually its not as nothing has left your account

Maybe not technically, but in practical terms it is being held and I cannot spend it or use it to pay bills etc. In my case it is only £30, but it could just as easily have been £500 that is in quarantine if that had been the amount of the transaction. That would have caused me some real grief cash-flow wise.

Broadwood

Heng_Leng wrote: »

Solutions:

1. Pay with cash
2. Use a credit card
3. Get an overdraft

The authorisation hold will normally drop off around 7 days

There is NO authorisation number on the cardholder copy. The transaction WASN'T authorised. It was DECLINED.

Your solutions are a "workaround". They don't solve the actual problem of the payments system being stacked against account holders.

Dobbibill

This has happened many many times to many many people.

This will drop off in time and should not debit your account.

Unfortunately, it's a matter of patience.

bengal-stripe

Broadwood wrote: »

They don't solve the actual problem of the payments system being stacked against account holders.

How often does that happen?

I believe in 20 years of debit card use it has happened to me once. Judging by your reaction, it is the first time it has happened to you. Yes, it can happen occasionally, but it is a rare event indeed!

Some saying about a sledgehammer and a nut springs to mind.

reclusive46

bengal-stripe wrote: »

How often does that happen?

I believe in 20 years of debit card use it has happened to me once. Judging by your reaction, it is the first time it has happened to you. Yes, it can happen occasionally, but it is a rare event indeed!

Some saying about a sledgehammer and a nut springs to mind.

What probably happened was that on the first attempt it was authorising and the signal got interrupted but the bank had already authorised it (just the card machine never received the data). Its an unfortunate reality with chip cards (A magnetic stripe transaction could back and apply the first authorisation code, without obtaining a new one).